Job Discussion Forums

[SpedEd]

[arioch36]

Okay, I'll post this.

Oral English does work. I have had many students over the years that have improved their english in class. Most efffective was when I met my class twice a week every other week, and when I taught a class si hours a week and we did some (not much ) writing and reading.

Why teach Oral English when it simply doesn;t work is a statement with no justification provided.
oral english does work. How well it works depends on a number of factors class size, teacher understanding of how to conduct an oral english class, department backup (ie, if a student fails, is he put through the wringer) In China the class ledaer is very important, though many foreignteachers don't understand this role.

Another problem is the foreign language department feels that the foreign teacher is not under their control, but under the control of the FAO, so are very hesitant to get involved with the FT. Thus their is no integration of effort

Personally I think Oral English teachers are not made to work hard enough sometimes. If I wanted to, I would never have to prepare for a clas, and never have to do any grading outsie a class. If I was king, oral english teachers would have to give vocabulary tests every 2 or 3 weeks. English majors arenot made to work as hard as other majors.

However I have not given vocabulary test for several years now. I have taugh non-english majors who have to take nearly as many english courses as english majors, as well as taking their own subjects.

Sorry Song and Dance, I think oral English classes can work but learning a language is hard and slow work (how many years have you been in China and how good is your english?), Krashen theory is basically immaterial in the typical Chinese environment, immersion is not possible (and Krrashen never really studied teaching english in a non english environment), and few leaders are willing to do things different. I am happy my school got the idea that having the same teacher for movie and writing class would be very helpful (and it is)

And of course a true oral english class is a much better listening class then the normal chinese taught listening class

[kev7161]

In some (many?) schools in China, FTs teaching "spoken" English visit a classroom once a week for a so-called lesson. Once a week. Five days a week for writing, grammar, listening to their Chinese teacher speak Chinglish and rote memorization. I suggested to my school they should hire teachers to work hand-in-hand with the Chinese English teacher - doing that once a week thing but also spending 10 minutes a lesson with the CT doing pronunciation drills or a simple, quick dialogue practice using what the kids have just learned from their CT. The response was the school couldn't afford to pay FTs to do this type of job (meaning they would obviously have to hire more FTs). So there it is. Teaching Spoken English isn't folly if done right but having the kids show up once a week for 40-45 minutes just can't get the job done.

[vikuk]

[eddy-cool]

I was fascinated by this statement (by Arioch):


If I was king, oral English teachers would have to give a VOCABULARY test every two or 3 weeks..."

Testing students' ability to juggle English words? Or testing their translation skills? What could be the purpose of such tests? I ask in a friendly intention.

Don't students already groan under an excessively rigid testing regime？ Why should an FT even have to direct their students to new words?

In the context of an FT's job the greatest challenge seems to be to actually KNOW what one's students have acquired over the many years of rote-memorisation. Tests could show which students have internalised the prescribed textbook's contents (vocabulary, grammar). NEW vocables should be of the kinds and types that students can infer from the context in which they are used; it is a shame that high-school students still have to be told which words to learn in the homework class of the evening.

Assessing any progress in speaking is extremely difficult, but a test held at the beginning of the term can reveal the most common problems students of one class face; subsequent tests (maybe 2 throughout the semester) could establish whether students have made adequate efforts at overcoming these previously identified problems. What could be the major problems? Intonation can hardly be a realistic goal for oral classes (except at normal school level); you have to be grateful to your learners if they master an intelligible pronunciation that doesn't blur the differences between /L/ and /R/ ('this is my birthday pleasant' instead of 'this is my birthday present').

The only chance for an FT to actually make a difference is by engaging the students themselves who must be made aware of how important it is to enunciate words unambiguously and clearly. Students who only produce English for your ears won't care how it sounds to the Chinese audience at a public English speech contest. To raise their awareness you have to first get them to actually listen to when their classmates speak English; most of them seem to believe they are only speaking for the FT's benefit - they pay no heed whatsoever when their peers speak.

[arioch36]

[Anda]

I get a bit tired of hearing what we can and can't do / achieve in one lesson a week. I can get quite good results teaching over two semesters with middle / high schools and college / university students. The reason for this is that I employ methods that have the students hearing, reading etc volume material during the lesson at a constant grammar / vocabulary level. Both Chinese, Korean teachers are quite capable of teaching vocabulary. Where local teachers fall down is that they don't get the students to answer verbal question or write stories.


Our lessons are usually supplementary to what is being taught by local teachers. Students learn where words go in exercisers etc but they do not have to create their own sentences or stories and of course they don't employ English to talk with their friends etc. As conversation teachers we should be getting them to use English in a creative way in conversation, story writing etc.

Children learn their native language fairly well by the time they are six years old. English speaking kids usually have up to a 12,000 vocabulary by this age. They can learn all this without trained language teachers. Now take a student that I have just started to prep for going to an Australian Uni! He has graduated from a top high school with a story writing ability of one paragraph along with terrible pronunciation and a minimal vocabulary level. I would say that language teaching needs to be rethought.

[arioch36]

As Anda's post perhaps suggests, each good oral teacher has their own strengths. So while I may sound quite strident about what I think is "perfect" for oral english. I am just as convinced that one of the beauties of Oral English is the freedom for each teacher to teach it effectively in a way that uses their own individual strengths and talents. This is an inherent weakness of all oral english textbooks, they reflect one way oral english can be taught using the writers experiences and strengths, which might not be consistent with another teacher's.
Of course the weakness of Oral english is that it also allows a FT to be totally lazy and/or worthless

[arioch36]

[vikuk]

[arioch36]

[Anda]

The main shortfall I see with English teachers is that they try to expand their students vocabulary before they have given them basic speaking, listening, reading and writing skills using the basic common words of English. All my teaching centers around getting my students to first make their own sentences and then be able to write short conversational scripts and stories.

What I am trying to do is to give students free talking ability at a simple level for interviews and English conversations.

If students haven't been taught how to actually make sentences rather than remember sentences then how can they be expected to progress if one is stuffing their heads full of an extended vocabulary?

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http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=50351
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BASIC wordsThe shortened list simplifies the effort to learn words as word signs. ... We know this simplified language as Basic English, the developer is Charles K. ...
foolswisdom.com/users/sbett/basic.htm - 41k - Cached - Similar pages

Large English Vocabulary Word Lists (ESL/EFL)These are lists of basic vocabulary compiled by various people with the aim of ... Nolls' Top 3000 American English Words This list was compiled by Paul and ...
www.manythings.org/vocabulary/lists/l/ - 9k - Cached - Similar pages

Basic English Word ListBasic English Word List. The alphabetized list of the 850 words of Basic English follows. a able about account acid across act addition adjustment ...
www.langmaker.com/wordlist/basiclex.htm - 15k - Cached - Similar pages

[arioch36]

agree, disagree, not relevant

The English major requires less work then any other major, which is why some students choose it. I have no problem giving them a little extra. Oral english class is the only class (just about) that rarely has teachers giving homework or tests. So students come to class "unprepared" because they are not asked to prepare anything

I agree vocab is not the first step, at least for me. It's step 4, getting them to use better vocabulary.

However, it should be done at the same time. practice the old, and insert something new

[Tsuris]

I also read the "article" and was terribly unimpressed. What is being passed off here as "research" wouldn't be acceptable even for a bachelor's degree thesis. Reports from students claiming that watching movies helped them with their English language skills is about as convincing as reading about all the improvements China is making in cleaning up their environment in the China Daily.

This "article" reads like a personal blog entry on steroids: "Hey guys, guess what we've been able to do in a Chinese university? Aren't we hot sh*t!" Maybe you are, but what does that have to do with using DVDs to teach English language skills? And maybe using DVDs to teach English is extremely useful. It's just that this overly long and painfully tedious blog entry doesn't make that point.

Here's what you need to do if you really think you are onto something truly "revolutionary" (and obviously you do):

First, find some objective measure to base your conclusions on (the strength and courage of your personal convictions, as well as those of your students and mates, don't count). Remove the David vs Goliath theme and the blow-by-blow accounts of your personal trials and tribulations with Chinese academic officials, not to mention 4000 years of history, then rewrite the article in 16 to 20 pages, double-spaced, one-inch margins. Organize your content according to following headings: Abstract, Introduction, Methodology, Results, and Discussion. Use the past tense for the first three sections and the present tense for the last two. It would also be nice if you could brush up on some research methodology and report how you attempted to follow something resembling the scientific method in that section.

Cheers.

[eddy-cool]

It's quite possible that they have a far larger passive vocabulary, words they memorised (and had to write in a test under their Chinese English teacher), words used without any contexts (hence these words have remained passive vocables); however, they not only fail to use those new words - they never or nearly never learn to use even their active vocabulary correctly.