Job Discussion Forums

[The Noodles]

i really don't know where i stand when teaching teenagers. Sometimes their total lack of motivation and ignorance is enough to make me wanna cry.

i had a kid who's been syudying in a training centre fo quite a while (probably years) look at mewith ablank face when i asked him to point to America on the world Map.

Another thought Australia was in europe. Maybe thing are different in shanghai where it's more international.

on the other hand these teenagers can also be my favourites. especially when they're being moody! (reminds me a lot of me)

[adamsmith]

not a thing you can do. I have actually told some of my best students what questions I will ask (when I had a visitin prof from a uk uni) and the answers before the class started. I thought it would help to make them look good (and myself as well). I asked the question - looked out on my students and saw the slack jawed response I have gotten so used to since teaching here. They do have there moments but overall I find the chinese students very unresponsive to questions.

[Calories]

Teenager attitude can never stand up to comedy.

[lf_aristotle69]

[vikdk]

[Roger]

Hi noodles,
long time no see ya! You have been around quite a while so I am a little surprised to see your despondency.

What you were observing we all have had to deal with for years. Here is a very vital tip: if you are not happy you cannot spread happiness! I alwaystake care of myself first, and that's not selfishness!

One needs a realistic assessment before one starts in earnest on one's job. I never believe Chinese are in English classes out of pure love for the lingo. It's personal chemistry that does many tricks.

BUt not all classes can be galvanised into energetic participation in ongoing teaching. Sometimes a whole class is a lost cause due to the very special, specifically-Chinese characteristics of acquiring "education".
Sometimes their Chinese English teachers have prepared them mentally and intellectually for you - and then it can be wonderful. However, the individual learner is there in spite of himself/heself.

In your situation, being faced with sullen, potentially hostile, youngsers whose hormones are in riots it's best to focus on certain academic parcels of English; think of what remedies they need rather than entertaining them. Teach them something their teachers failed to do - proper pronunciation, intonation, anything that's really new and doesn't collide with traditional Chinese teaching techniques (from the top down, i.e. teacher-centredness).

Yesterday I had a wonderful discussion with a Chinese English teacher aged 24. She has a very good command of the language although she has not seen many non-Chinese in her life.
What I learnt from her was this: there are INDIVDIUALS that stand out from the mass.
In her case: she became an English teacher not because she wanted to (few actually want to study what they do study); she was given a study place in the English Department of a university in Zhengzhou without being asked whether she wanted to study that. The reason why she ended up studying at that university was: she wanted to spend a few years away from her small village in Guangxi, and chose Zhengzhou "because of its long history" (it's the location of Shang dynasty ruins).
Had she chosen to study in Changsha or in Guilin or anywhere else, who knows whether she might have been allowed to study what her father and brother studied, namely medicine?

But is she unhappy? Not at all! In fact, she is enormously popular with her charges, a fact borne out by the sight of 3 youngsters who swarmed around her when I saw her. She is giving themn grammar classes during the summer holidays - and she loves it.

Maybe in the big cities there simply is no enthusiasm for anything, no spontaneous honest human feelings. In the rural parts you get so much more of that. And judging by the friendly reception foreigners get in this part of China, it's worth teaching here even though pay is lower.

[vikdk]

[The Noodles]

actually Roger i totally agree with you there. Rural teaching is a lot more refreshing. Student are so motivated. In fact they're lovely....

I don't mean to bi#@* Teenagers are my favourites because you can really get some interesting stuff from them. One student the other week surprised me with her answer.

I asked why she didn't like school and her response was simple but so to the point. "because we're treated like exam machines" it's so encouraging to hear this over the usual... "too many homeworks" "so boring"

Her response actually got others thinking and we got a little discussion going.

Students can be quite analytical if you guide them in this direction from the beginning. I like to set some ground rules from the first lesson.

it's a good idea for them to know that they're not going to get a laughing dancing clown for three months and that they WILL be reqired to think.

[vikdk]

[KWhitehead]

[danswayne]

[no_exit]

Chinese kids study geography pretty late, but you'll be surprised sometimes by what they do know. Ask them if they've taken geography yet, because once they do get to geography class, it is quite challenging, but it doesn't center on the Western world, it centers on Asian geography and the geography of China in particular (they can name all of the provinces, I'd wager, which is more than lots of kids back in the States could do with their own country's geography).

I got my class of middle schoolers really excited about the geography lesson once. I gave them a blank map of the world, and a blank map of Asia. I wrote ALL of the names of the continents, major oceans, and countries of Asia up on the board. Then we played a guessing game, and I asked them to try and work backwards from the English names, which do sound quite similar to the Chinese names, to figure out which countries were which. Some are obvious, like, say, Yemen, which is exactly the same in English as in Chinese. Some take a bit of creative thinking -- Pakistan is Ba-Ji-Si-Tan in Chinese. I made it a contest and told them that whoever could give me the most complete and correct map by the end of the period would get a prize. I then asked them to research a country of their choice at home and present it to the class the next week, and many of the kids ended up with very nice reports (when they weren't on anti-Japan rants, that is), and a bit of extra knowledge about a different place. Not too bad for middle schoolers.

If you can find a way to spark their interest, middle schoolers can be great (don't get me started on my advanced high school class which had lively discussions on the topics of African colonialism, sweatshops, minimum wage, and psuedoscience!), but sparking their interest can be a challenge when they seem so actively disengaged from learning in general, and their levels of enthusiasm are so low (partly due to their age, partly to their environment).

[KWhitehead]

[The Noodles]

i can't name much above London

[lf_aristotle69]