Job Discussion Forums

[Brian Hugh]

I read this on many advertisements for work here. Most places are using Cambridge New Concepts English. I think the adjectives before teaching materials should be juxtiposed.
I have a hard time believing the materials are created by Cambridge. Doesn't matter because I never use them. Topics bounce around too much and seem to be very contrived. I spend most of my pedagoical time teaching verb tenses. Schools seem to like teacher centered classrooms .

[twilothunder]

[spiral78]

Art of the State?




transposed, perhaps

[GeminiTiger]

last time i heard this word i was in jr high reading

The Blue Adept, by Piers Anthony.

http://www.amazon.com/Blue-Adept-Apprentice-ebook/dp/B002BH5HWG

[Non Sequitur]

[roadwalker]

The textbooks I've been given fall into one of three categories: 1) Chinese-written, Chinglish-filled, grammatically horrible, poorly conceived and executed; 2) Western-written with few to none mistakes, but culturally completely foreign to my student's lives (references to celebrities past their pull dates, complaints about activities unknown in China, etc.); and 3) Chinese-"written" books that are actually plagiarized from online or other sourced materials.

The first ones are just impossible to work with since one either teaches Chinglish and ignores the errors, or spends too much time explaining how the passage should read. The second ones can be useful in teaching culture, but they're not as good as an actual culture book that introduces concepts in a more logical fashion. So they would be good as supplementary materials for a culture class but not so good for oral English, which is the more typical class.

The third ones can be useful too, but the type of publisher that would plagiarize materials is the same type that would make the first few lessons somewhat coherent and then merely cut and paste the rest of the contractually obligated materials.

Luckily, my school now has pcs and audio-visual equipment in the classrooms so it is easier to make my own materials.

[Non Sequitur]

Road Walker
Do you make your own materials for culture or oral or both?

[Brian Hugh]

What I am interested in is in teaching verbs. I teach kindies who don't know Chinese yet, up to VIP middle school students. When children learn their first language ,do they use verbs or nouns? They seem to teach nouns . I use mainly a TPR approach so it is more verb centered. I get criticized by the monitoring Chinese teacher for having to active a class. I also use a lot of clips and DVD' s(Charlie Chaplan my favorite) and have them repeat after me what is going on. This also doesn't go over. I use the rule of thumb that if the chlid is 5 you need 12 activiites for a class. It it is an adult of 20, you need at least 5. Sometines they don't fly and you do another activity and sometimes it works well so I stretch it.
I also teach deaf kids as a volunteer for ten hours a week. The deaf classes are large so a challange. I have learned the most from these deaf kids who often get sign language to explain what I am doing. The deaf kids make the same pronunciation mistakes as the kids that can hear.
Interchange was a good series , but like said, it gets out of date fast. It tries to be here and now but the world is changing qickly. I like the way they use many different pronunciations and accents on the tapes. That is the real world. Most of the English being spoken today is by people using it as a second language.

[roadwalker]

[The Great Wall of Whiner]

New Concept English? Is that the yellow (book 1) Red (book 2) etc. series?

[Non Sequitur]

GWOW
I think that colour scheme is New Interchange.
Anyone?

[chinatimes]