Ha ha! I got 'teach' into my subject line 3 times! Wow. So, I'm teaching English in an elementary school in Japan. I'm the first ALT at my school and I'm there 5 days a week. This is sort of a pilot program to see if little kids can learn English better if they have a lesson once a week with the same instructor.
Loads of the teachers I work with are interested in improving their English and they also want to participate more during English classes with their students. The 'ideal' would be team teaching whereby we work together and lead the class in equal parts. It's not like that now and it's a goal that's been handed down to me from my bosses.
So the teachers want to learn how to teach English and they are EXPECTED to do so but many of them are low-level. Their pronunciation and overall structure is all off.
Last month I gave my first English class for the teachers. I made command cards and showed them the gesture and accompanying phrase to use in class. If we are all on the same page, I figure, the possibility of team teaching may not be beyond our reach. That was last month.
Tomorrow's my next English lesson for the teachers. We don't have a text, it's all really informal, and the class is short. About 30 minutes. But please don't say, "that's not enough time," I know it's not much but it's all they are able to give right now. I hope to give some more formal instruction at the end of this semester.
Given these parameters what do you think would be suitable to teach? I should add that this is a group of about 25 teachers, a very hodge podge mix, from absolute beginners to mid-level English experience.
I've thought about teaching adjectives, superlatives, verbs. Just not sure what's best or how to approach it in a way that will be meaningful to everyone.
Any feedback will be appreciated.
Teaching Teachers How to Teach
Moderators: Dimitris, maneki neko2, Lorikeet, Enrico Palazzo, superpeach, cecil2, Mr. Kalgukshi2
I don't want to discourage you, but I have plenty of experience with teachers from an almost identical cultural background: my Chinese coun terparts have a problem with their thinking. They are inured to their Chinese rote-learning method and are not used to thinking independently. They are not accultured enough to get by in English and only see the world through their Chinese concepts and eyes.
This leads them to always think along two parallel grooves - one in the language spoken, the other in the other language. They have to translate every single word. And that's what they are teaching their own charges. The biggest challenge is to make them accept that their mother tongue not be used one way or the other during formal and informal gatherings.
With kids it is somewhat easier as they are still amenable to some prodding. Preschool kids can learn to conceptualise the world through the English medium. That's what I think you can try to get across to your Japanese teachers.
They should learn to view their own mediocre English level more critically and help their own students avoid falling into the same trap.
If you succeed in doing this, you have half won.
Perhaps using some Total Physical Response elements helps persuade them. All those attempts in which you use nonverbal language are less than helpful because they reinforce the student's need to "see" your message. My Chinese English teacher colleagues, for instance, always hold up one finger to signify "one", or two, to signify "two"; the kids thus don't get used to relying on their aural gift.
This leads them to always think along two parallel grooves - one in the language spoken, the other in the other language. They have to translate every single word. And that's what they are teaching their own charges. The biggest challenge is to make them accept that their mother tongue not be used one way or the other during formal and informal gatherings.
With kids it is somewhat easier as they are still amenable to some prodding. Preschool kids can learn to conceptualise the world through the English medium. That's what I think you can try to get across to your Japanese teachers.
They should learn to view their own mediocre English level more critically and help their own students avoid falling into the same trap.
If you succeed in doing this, you have half won.
Perhaps using some Total Physical Response elements helps persuade them. All those attempts in which you use nonverbal language are less than helpful because they reinforce the student's need to "see" your message. My Chinese English teacher colleagues, for instance, always hold up one finger to signify "one", or two, to signify "two"; the kids thus don't get used to relying on their aural gift.
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Sally Olsen
- Posts: 1322
- Joined: Thu Apr 08, 2004 2:24 pm
- Location: Canada,France, Brazil, Japan, Mongolia, Greenland, Canada, Mongolia, Ethiopia next
I had the same situation here in Greenland. I broke the teachers down into interest groups - all grade 1 teachers together, etc. I made sure that they knew they were to support and help one another. We brainstormed ways for the groups to meet together at other times than our short "workshops". They came up with great ideas but the one that worked the best was sitting together once a week at lunch. They started to exchange ideas of what they did in the classroom and exercises that they had developed for the textbook. Don't the kids have a textbook? There was always a mix of abilities in the groups of 4 to 6 and so the better ones brought up the poorer ones. The better ones got better because they were teaching and it just kept going. Each session they worked on a problem and I tried to sit in the groups at lunch during the week and find out about the problems beforehand so I could bring along sample materials they might want to try. At the end I asked them to each make up a lesson plan or a short essay on the things that worked the best for them; we copied those for all the teachers and made the beginnings of a manual out it. They also have a chat line here and that gets a lot of comments going back and forth. The ideas have to come from them or they won't implement them and often I was amazed because they were suggesting such basic things as saying, "Good Morning" to the students in the hall in English and yet when I thought about it, I could see how powerful that could be. I think there are often a lot of steps we miss out because we just don't know they are there when we come in from "outside" and they can see these and make the changes gradually for a longer lasting impact.
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flowerfreshgirl
- Posts: 5
- Joined: Wed May 26, 2004 12:50 pm
Hi Roger & Sally,
Thanks for your thoughtful responses. I taught that class yesterday for my teachers and tried to get them interacting with each other as much as possible. They did a good job even though they reverted back to Japanese a lot.
Perhaps a major difference between teaching Japanese students and teaching Chinese students is that the Japanese have katakana. A lot of words they use are borrowed from English and Japanified. I think sometimes my students believe they're speaking Japanese when really their speaking a mangled English. So there is more crossover.
Sally: there is no text for the kids. This is a new program and it's not very well thought out. The curriculum is sloppy at best and I'm trying to build a program really from the ground up. All of the materials that I use in my classes are made the week before. And the students have so little experience studying English that there's no way we could, say, design our own text. But that would be cool.
My boyfriend was in the Peace Corps and they had a motto: a perfect project is one that when you (the volunteer) leaves the country the local people say, "we did this ourselves." That's what I'm aiming for with my teachers. The decision as to whether or not the kids at my school will have an ALT next year is hanging in the balances; all I can do is try to get my teachers feeling confident enough to do this next year without me if the need arises. And that's a bigger task, I think, than teaching the classes themselves. It's easy to go in and get the job done yourself, you know, the hard thing is conscientiously sharing the burdens and joys of teaching with another teacher. That's the real challenge for me.
Thanks for your thoughtful responses. I taught that class yesterday for my teachers and tried to get them interacting with each other as much as possible. They did a good job even though they reverted back to Japanese a lot.
Perhaps a major difference between teaching Japanese students and teaching Chinese students is that the Japanese have katakana. A lot of words they use are borrowed from English and Japanified. I think sometimes my students believe they're speaking Japanese when really their speaking a mangled English. So there is more crossover.
Sally: there is no text for the kids. This is a new program and it's not very well thought out. The curriculum is sloppy at best and I'm trying to build a program really from the ground up. All of the materials that I use in my classes are made the week before. And the students have so little experience studying English that there's no way we could, say, design our own text. But that would be cool.
My boyfriend was in the Peace Corps and they had a motto: a perfect project is one that when you (the volunteer) leaves the country the local people say, "we did this ourselves." That's what I'm aiming for with my teachers. The decision as to whether or not the kids at my school will have an ALT next year is hanging in the balances; all I can do is try to get my teachers feeling confident enough to do this next year without me if the need arises. And that's a bigger task, I think, than teaching the classes themselves. It's easy to go in and get the job done yourself, you know, the hard thing is conscientiously sharing the burdens and joys of teaching with another teacher. That's the real challenge for me.
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Sally Olsen
- Posts: 1322
- Joined: Thu Apr 08, 2004 2:24 pm
- Location: Canada,France, Brazil, Japan, Mongolia, Greenland, Canada, Mongolia, Ethiopia next
You have a great attitude. We used the English curriculum developed by the Peace Corps in Mongolia and it was great. I think they have the right idea in making it fit the circumstances and the situation. You have a golden opportunity to develop materials then if you don't have a textbook. I am really excited about the picture dictionary idea. You take pictures of the kids and have 10 words that you learn on a page. We started with the theme "Me" and did body parts and then did the classroom and classroom commands and then the kids wanted to do animals. You number the words from one to ten so that you can play games with them or point them out in some way in the conversation. For every 10 words they made up their own story from simple, "This is a nose." to kids with more English who said, "Her nose is like her grandmother's." We then posted the pictures and the stories and each class wanted their stories in the bulletin board. They typed them on the computers so they looked more professional and used the spell and grammar checks to catch their own errors. You can then do all sorts of things with those stories for homework - cloze exercises, putting in new words to change it , changing to the negative, adding adjectives and of course, making games from the words. People seem to learn words in groups of similar characteristics or use, so words from the kitchen are learned more easily, doctor and nurse seem to go together and so on, so it is easy to develop themes. It is their book because it has pictures of local buildings and local people, local food, local religious organizations, etc. They seem more interested in other lands and what they eat and what they do once they have established their own base line. In Mongolia we gave an English Mongolian dictionary to the students who knew all the words and could use them in a sentence to make sense. the kids tested each other from a book with just pictures and no words. There are 1000 words in our dictionary but now they want to work on the second one. The Let's Go Picture Dictionary was always my favourite in Japan because it had so many other materials with it, tapes of songs and such. I loved the chants - A my name is Alice. A sample copy of that might give the teachers more ideas. As far as keeping the program for next year, try to make yourself as visible in the school as possible. If there are school assemblies participate as much as you can. I can't sing but I do a skit with the kids or recite a poem with a slide show behind. I sit with a different teacher each break time and get them to teach me Greenlandic. I don't insist on them speaking English at all but of course they do in trying to explain the Greenlandic. I have an English bulletin board and change it every two weeks. I talk to the kids in the halls and after school and go to soccer games, cultural festivals and birthday parties to make myself known in the area. Once they see that the kids are so at ease in talking to you, they will want to continue the position.
And this one?
Hey everyone!
Here's something you might try. It's what I've done in special teachers' workshops with Spanish EFL teachers in the public schools.
As much as you can sit around talking about ideas, which is very important, I think the class could be more active by putting these teachers in their students' shoes. Let's say the class theme is learning to say the ABCs correctly and spell their own name without too much pausing and certainly not always starting at A and running through the entire list until you get to R....
Make an ABC flash-card set. Sit your students in a close circle. Start with one student and have him/her say the letters seen. They ought to be in a random order, we only say them in order when we sing the song....separate the letters they don't get right and give them points for the letters said correctly. Continue with the next. Have them cheer on their classmates. Let them help one another out . Do a round robin of all of the students. Have them spell their names. Have them all standing and if one says a letter wrong that person must sit down and wait for the next round. At the end of the class, have them line up at the door and have them one by one say the entire ABCs in order. Finally, tell them that this is a way they might teach the same to their kids. I have used this with students from 5 to 50 years old and all ages and levels enjoy it.
Doing this you avoid discussing theory and you demonstrate practice. Naturally, you are not expecting the teachers to teach exactly as you do. However, you are demonstrating the ideas and at the same time helping them with difficulties they may have. Adults are always more open to seeing and experiencing useful material than simply being told: "This works for me". If you show that it works for you, they might decide that it, or something similar, will work for them. The ABCs is just one example. Teach them anything in this way. It might work.
Objective planning is another area that is often overlooked, but I've posted on that in another place, if you search you might find it, I know it is in the Adult Education thread in a question about conversation classes but I don't recall where!
peace,
revel.
Here's something you might try. It's what I've done in special teachers' workshops with Spanish EFL teachers in the public schools.
As much as you can sit around talking about ideas, which is very important, I think the class could be more active by putting these teachers in their students' shoes. Let's say the class theme is learning to say the ABCs correctly and spell their own name without too much pausing and certainly not always starting at A and running through the entire list until you get to R....
Make an ABC flash-card set. Sit your students in a close circle. Start with one student and have him/her say the letters seen. They ought to be in a random order, we only say them in order when we sing the song....separate the letters they don't get right and give them points for the letters said correctly. Continue with the next. Have them cheer on their classmates. Let them help one another out . Do a round robin of all of the students. Have them spell their names. Have them all standing and if one says a letter wrong that person must sit down and wait for the next round. At the end of the class, have them line up at the door and have them one by one say the entire ABCs in order. Finally, tell them that this is a way they might teach the same to their kids. I have used this with students from 5 to 50 years old and all ages and levels enjoy it.
Doing this you avoid discussing theory and you demonstrate practice. Naturally, you are not expecting the teachers to teach exactly as you do. However, you are demonstrating the ideas and at the same time helping them with difficulties they may have. Adults are always more open to seeing and experiencing useful material than simply being told: "This works for me". If you show that it works for you, they might decide that it, or something similar, will work for them. The ABCs is just one example. Teach them anything in this way. It might work.
Objective planning is another area that is often overlooked, but I've posted on that in another place, if you search you might find it, I know it is in the Adult Education thread in a question about conversation classes but I don't recall where!
peace,
revel.
ESL for kids
There are some great books about teacher ESL to children you might want to get. One is title Teaching English To Children in Asia by David Paul who lives in Japanl (you can fax them and get a copy, then mail them payment latter.
http://www.eltnews.com/features/intervi ... aul1.shtml
I'd also recommend
Teaching the World's Children: Esl for Ages Three to Seven (The Pippin Teacher's Library, 16)
you can get these at amazon.jp
Finally, go to www.oup.jp.com
and sign up for the oxford kids club. You can request copies of books, here are a few I recommend from Oxford
Small Talk: More Jazz Chants (Oxford American English)
Chatter BOX (THIS BOOK IS AMAZING!! just trust me!!)
Of course you can write Cambridge and Longmann press and get free saample books as well.
Finally, have you seen Genki English! People say their CDs are a life saver!
Good luck. Feel free to email me: [email protected]
http://www.eltnews.com/features/intervi ... aul1.shtml
I'd also recommend
Teaching the World's Children: Esl for Ages Three to Seven (The Pippin Teacher's Library, 16)
you can get these at amazon.jp
Finally, go to www.oup.jp.com
and sign up for the oxford kids club. You can request copies of books, here are a few I recommend from Oxford
Small Talk: More Jazz Chants (Oxford American English)
Chatter BOX (THIS BOOK IS AMAZING!! just trust me!!)
Of course you can write Cambridge and Longmann press and get free saample books as well.
Finally, have you seen Genki English! People say their CDs are a life saver!
Good luck. Feel free to email me: [email protected]