Teacher Discussion Forums

I'm going to Henan this summer for 5 weeks to teach in a middle school. I've never had teaching experience but I am a Linguistic major so hopefully that will help. From listening to people talk about their experiences I am a little concerned about not having enough time to allow the children to open up in the class room. I have them for 3 hours in the morning and 2 in the afternoon for 5 days a week.
As far as lesson plans...is teaching Chinese children phonetics a good idea? To help with pronunciation.
Are there any helpful lesson plans that seem to work for Chinese middle school students? Is showing a movie a waste of time or do the children learn from it...because i never learned anything from watching movies in my foreign language classes.

Any help would be much appreciated!
Samantha

well, first, i want to know that whether you are a foreign teacher, ie a native speaker or a chinese one, because it counts aa lot for chinese students.

if you are a native speaker, i suggest you taught phonetics, pronuncation through various games by different themes, for example, food, clothes, or furniture. additionally, try to cultivate their cultural awareness. a movie would be help if it is suitable for you student and teaching content.

if you are a chinese teacher, i'm sure you know quite well the current english teaching problems existing in china. in that case, i suggest you adapt you teaching method. don't use the traditional ones. it won't help. PPP TBL bottom-up or top- down are already old-fashioned for them. try to attract students' attention by novality. another advicr, don't focuse on vocabulary and grammar only. they are bothed with all these stuff. thay want reflesh bood in the classroom. use english as a tool, teach english for the purpose of communication not for knowledge.

Well, i think watching a movie in the class will increase the interests of studying english among the students. As far as i know, many students in China, they are afraid of speaking in class, because they don't want to make mistakes in front of their classmates. so watching a movie is a good way to decrease the nervous. Besides, i suggest you that you can use some tongue twisters when you teach the phonetics.

Sumer camp should be fun!

Make puppets to exemplify the parts of speech. Make up a list of sentences with the puppet parts of speech in them. Have the kids use the puppets to read the sentences and show how the parts of speech have to work together.

Songs are a very useful way of teaching English to students who have a very limited vocabulary. The rythym and beat of a beat are universal and the lyrics very often are rhyming which make English easier to learn.

Recycle text: Get the students to read the Text, then go back over it by look at it in a different way, ie; ask the students to look at the text or dialog, and ask them to pick out all word that begin W, Or S, the in groups make up a song, or story (more abstract as possible)

if the class is not on target, or engaged in the English lesson, the play word games; Hangman, sherades, etc. make it a comparison, and keep the motivated.

Teaching English Through Media, Over a period of five lessons in one week, students work through the activities. pick a project then teach them via any Media a available: like a trip to the zoo, how will you get there, when there what will you see, animals, and so on.

if you get a mix level class with different ages get the stronger speaking students to help the weaker speaker with their English. use them as a tool. get them to self teach and learn.

Shaping the Way We Teach English is a video-based training product for English language educators. It has 14 modules (topics). The videos showcase classroom scenes from around the world and have an accompanying training manual plus additional readings.

on you tube at:

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_q ... type=&aq=f
you have to be an S.A.S. teacher,, A DELTA ninja, or a Class clown in China. You have to adapt and overcome, in the land where a Degree is a piece of card, and the English language is for future proofing society.

Happy Teaching...
P.S. it's very hot in China in the summer, so don't dehydrate.