Job Discussion Forums

[englishmaster]

I'll be beginning a conversation course for teacher trainees later this week, and I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions about what to do with them. The students are Malaysians who are training to teach English in elementary schools.

I have taught conversational English before, of course, but would be open to suggestions about useful class activities and methods for getting my students to talk.

Does anyone know of topics that are particularly effective with Malaysians?

Thanks.

[gajackson1]

Hmmm - trainees, correct? As in, teachers-to-be?

Well, I wish I had my 'stuff' from Korea, but it hasn't arrived yet. When I did my teacher training classes with the MoE in South Korea, I recycled some of the stuff from my own student teaching days, and added in some web-gleaned ideas.

Some topic ideas would be about what kinds of students they like, why they want to teach, who were some of their own best & worst teachers, and why, what they are most looking forward to re: teaching, what things are they worried about, etc.

You could probably find the list of Job Interview questions, and custom-tailor them into teaching-related ones to get things going.

Touching back on the Uni stuff, one of my own teachers gave us a topic at the end of each class. We had to write approximately 1 page into a teaching journal about the topic, and then be ready to discuss it at the beginning of the next class for a few minutes. Maybe something like that will work for you, as well?

Best of luck with it!

Glen

[englishmaster]

Thanks for the reply.

Yes, I will indeed be teaching elementary school teacher trainees, and I have gathered that they'll be a mixed bag. Of course, I intend to start off the class by questioning them about their needs, concerns and objectives, and probably extemporizing from there. There's plenty of material in the dept. library and school bookstore for me to forage. I'll also ask them to write self-introduction paragraphs, or something similar that will give me a handle on their English level and state of mind.

Do you know of any vocabulary-building material online specifically for teacher trainees?

Regards.