Job Discussion Forums

[askiptochina]

This won't be really a class, so I am calling it a group (like honor roll students).

I have a few students at the public school (high school) I teach at who are advanced compared the other students. Their schedule is already set, but they have a 2 hour lunch break. I am planning on using that time for any advanced students who would like to have lunch and meet during this time. This way it won't conflict with their regular classes. The head English teacher at the school ok'd it, and now I just need to invite all the students and see if they can come.

Any other ideas to make this work (time wise)? I know I can schedule after school, but it's 6:30pm and they are still there. I would rather get it done earlier, so we can all go home. Weekends would be an idea, but then I have to talk to the language school who is my real employer about this. The language school would just charge the students if they knew I was doing this.

In addition to scheduling, what things do you do for a class like this? I have already done some SAT prep for Koreans in China. Their English is considerably better than 95% of the students at this rural public high school. However, it was basically at a "hagwon" style school (Korean version of a language mill school). I don't like the structure of hagwons and I want to do things like read a book or use a movie to spawn various debates.

What success stories do you have with advanced students? I have experience with low level students which require patience, but advanced students are too smart for me and I want to stay ahead of the game and offer them something that will help them.

My worry is that I will give them too much stuff I wanted to learn at their age and not what they want or maybe need. I don't want them to think they wasted their time with something they might not be interested in and aren't seeing positive results with. Is testing part of advanced classes, or do you focus more on personal growth without trying to make them achieve a standard (since they are already past it compared to their school classmates)?

[Non Sequitur]

What would be of most use to this group of more able students I think depends on what they intend to do after high school.

If they intend to pursue English as an English Major at a university, their needs are different than if they are going down a vocational route at a college.

In vocational areas like foreign trade and hotel management (which are the two vocational college areas I�ve had personal experience of) the Oral English side is worth emphasising. Let them phone each other in English and order some merchandise, take a booking etc.

For English Majors at a university their course will likely include fair chunks of Literature including Shakespeare.

When I last taught English Majors at university (2nd year) they were studying The Merchant Of Venice with their Chinese professors.

So for this group, a bit of Shakespeare and maybe something on the history of the novel?

The uni-bound students will likely be a bit mystified by the lit but they will have to take it on trust that it will become clear later in their careers.
As you say you don't want to overload them.
If you can get your reasoning across to the parents, they will likely have a longer view of their kid's education.

A Chinese teacher would of course hold the extra class time at home and charge for it!