Job Discussion Forums

[kidkensei]

Hi just started my first year as an ALT in a junior Highschool.

Recently I:ve been told by a JTE that I should be preparing lessons and making supplimentary materials for her lessons. She explained that in the next lesson I should find a way to introduce present perfect tense. My idea was to make a handout that used all the same phrases and words from the text book but instead of learning about some Tanzanian named Kileo they would learn about be. Everytime I went to the teacher she said my ideas were too advanced for the students. How do you veteran ALTs decide what students know and dont know already from the text books?

Recently in other classes i:ve seen students doing written and oral excercises involving grammar that this teacher says is too difficult for us to present. This confuses me alot. Perhaps its not a matter of what students know but HOW they know it that I have to come to grips with. After all the school system here seems to emphasis more of a mnuematic understanding of English doesn:t it??

Any advice here would make work these days a little less complicated.

Kensei

[Glenski]

JHS and SHS students are not taught to speak the language. The J teachers present the grammar, hope that students have some fun with them or the ALT in JHS enough to get some motivation to stay awake in SHS lessons where they essentially deconstruct complicated sentences grammatically in order to pass college entrance exams, NOT to speak or understand spoken English.

Without knowing precisely what you are supposed to teach, and what you have proposed, I can't say much more.

Make the lessons as personal as possible. Involve knowledge that students already know in order to answer, but preteach vocabulary.

Make lessons relatively short (5 minutes presentation on your part, 5 minutes elicitation with the brave souls, 5 minutes of pair/group work, followed by as lighthearted a review as possible).

Give them pronunciation practice, as your voice is the only native English speaker they will ever hear until they hit college. At my uni, some kids have NEVER had a foreign teacher!

[cornishmuppet]

Mrs Kilio and her paintings, that's New Crown 3, right? Yeah, I remember that! Plenty of sleepers during those classes....

To do something like present perfect, I would prepare a practice activity like this, for example.

Prep -

Think of about twenty odd sentences using the present perfect and famous people. For example,

Spiderman has climbed the Empire State Building.
Michael Jackson has eaten natto.
etc.

Check the indexes of books 1 & 2 and only use verbs they SHOULD know, plus famous people (use as many Japanese as you can, famous movie characters, etc. You'd be amazed how many people you think are famous that they've never heard of), and well known objects/places/foods, etc. Don't use anything obscure.

Type the sentences up in Word and then scramble them all up. If you can, put the subjects (people), the verbs and the objects in different colors. If you don't have access to a color printer, put them in different fonts or different sizes. What I generally do is middle align all the words and create an attractive-looking diamond shape.

In class -

Have the kids in groups. Give each group a print and an answer sheet, either a blank piece of paper or a table, anything will do.

The aim is to create as many present perfect sentences as possible. Students should write them on the answer sheet then bring it to you and read. The sentences won't be as you originally wrote them, but as long as they make sense they are good. Have the students make an orde rin their group and take it in turns to come up. What I usually do is get hold of a dice which I have them roll if their sentence is good, and give them that many points. This serves to randomise it, meaning the weaker groups have a better chance to get more points. Give the winning group a sticker.


Generally in my JH classes the JTE explained the grammar. I was rarely asked to do it - if you are, you've probably got a lazy JTE. My role was practice activities lasting roughly half the class.

Good luck!

[gonzarelli]

"It's too difficult for the students." was what I heard constantly when I first started. Then I started using words they learned the previous year while keeping the grammar the same. The JTE stopped talking about difficult lessons. Apparently, review of previous year's material is always a good idea because they've forgotten the material.

[gwynnie86]

Surely they won't learn if you don't push them a little bit! That's what my TEFL weekend taught me anyway ... lots of discovery learning and fun... I just hope the JTEs don't mind joining in

[cornishmuppet]

Yeah, quite often they do. You get some good ones, but others can be a real hassle. I had one P-in-the-A JTE who would let me finish preparing a worksheet/activity then make me completely redo it if I'd used a word that wasn't in the textbook. Mind you, the same woman expected me to pronounce the words from the book the same as they were on the CD which was kind of ridiculous (I'm British, the CD was US Eng) and seemed to defeat the point of me being in the room. Pretty glad I don't work with her anymore. Most of them actually understand what a dictionary is for, and the benefits of hearing different accents, but don't count on it.

[Lyrajean]

Part of the problem you may run into as an ALT is that the students are begin taught grammar to make rather complicated sentences with complicated vocabulary, but their speaking level is really much lower 'cause they don't get to practice that at all except when you're there.

You'll get caught in the bind of trying to teach listening or speaking as an ALT (that's what you're there for right?) and also being asked to relate it to a curriculum that's way above their ability to contruct spoken language as opposed to written.

I have students who are supposed to be making complicated sentence structures like 'who' and 'which' clauses. Yet can't say more to me verbally than "Hello my name is... How are you?... I'm fine and you?"

It's going to be hard for you esp. if you have a JTE that's stubborn or lazy since its really their class and theiy're the boss, but try to work in some time during class to practice basic conversational english at whatever level your students are at, and don't judge based on the textbook. If you can try and talk to your students between classes at lunch etc. Find out how much English they can use before they freeze up or resort to Japanese.

[cornishmuppet]

Exactly. You're employed and paid to teach speaking but no one actually gives a damn about it or regards it with any importance, from the students right up to the government.

Just note how quick your classes get dropped whenever a test comes around. In a small elective class of ten students yesterday the teacher actually asked the the students whether they would like to do a usual speaking style class or test study. Guess what they chose? I was relegated back to the teachers' room to drink some more coffee.

[kidkensei]

once again thanks to everyone that posted here, seeing your comments definitely helps put things in a better perspective. Very hard to do given my current cultural/lingual isolation.

cornishmuppet, guess what, i am drinking coffee in the staff room, it is a test day tomorrow and 3 of my classes have been canceled because of high school entrance exam prep.

$$Lyrajean, I think your absolutely right about the discrepancy between listening and speaking/writing ability.

Kensei