Hi all,
I need some advice on how to arrange a 7 hour class.
My job will be teaching 4x 7 hour classes a month, one class every week. One course is 28 hours total. So after one month the students will change. Each class will have about 10-20 students.
I am allowed to teach just about anything, from speaking, writing, reading, etc. The school is allowing me the freedom to design the class. The issue is what to do with the same students for 7 hours.
I should mention that these students are most likely studying for a PhD or MBA, their ages will be anywhere from 23 to 50, but the mean age is probably around 30.
Seven Hour English Class, Need Ideas Help!
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fluffyhamster
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Although a seven-hour day will always be way too long, this could be a golden opportunity to get a fair amount of halfway-decent work done, such as zip through the most useful bits in a textbook or two. Maybe something like Hollet et al's In at the Deep End (OUP) (yup, I haven't bought many actual textbooks over the years, at least not recently, despite some of them becoming all "corpus-informed" and stuff) would provide a reasonable basis, or at least give plenty of ideas for activities to supplement a different choice of main textbook. What I suppose I'm basically saying is, I would want to have something relatively integrated and coherent thematically (hence the suggestion of a "businessy" book for the MBA students at least) to fall back on, because it will be hard work to develop a connected course from scratch and/or from good but potentially "non-cohering" faves from your stash of likely mainly "general" English activities.
Anyway, I'll run my finger along my bookshelves and then across my chin and see if I can come up with some more concrete suggestions - just trying to help attract more replies for you here for now, Jesl. But it might help if you could give us some - any! in fact - indication of what YOU the teacher might like to teach. I know that there is a lot of lip-service paid to student's needs and this and that, but if there's something (some linguistic item or items, some topic, etc etc) that YOU at least feel if not are convinced could be of great interest to students generally (but you just don't quite have the materials developed or found yet), then ask us and we'll probably do a better job of helping you to knock yourself out knocking your students out with that "something, anything" to "make 'em HAPPY!".
Anyway, I'll run my finger along my bookshelves and then across my chin and see if I can come up with some more concrete suggestions - just trying to help attract more replies for you here for now, Jesl. But it might help if you could give us some - any! in fact - indication of what YOU the teacher might like to teach. I know that there is a lot of lip-service paid to student's needs and this and that, but if there's something (some linguistic item or items, some topic, etc etc) that YOU at least feel if not are convinced could be of great interest to students generally (but you just don't quite have the materials developed or found yet), then ask us and we'll probably do a better job of helping you to knock yourself out knocking your students out with that "something, anything" to "make 'em HAPPY!".
Last edited by fluffyhamster on Sun Jun 28, 2009 2:47 am, edited 1 time in total.
It depends what the needs and levels of your students are. Firstly, how good are they at English? If there weak (for someone wanting to do an MBA/PHD in English), then you will be doing more remedial-general English work.
However, if they are at a level close to where they need to be to study an MBA/Phd in English, then your work should be more focused on specific things they need to do on these courses. Firstly, academic listening may be a need. Possible sources online for academic listening would be http://www.englishlistening.com/index.jsp
www.esl-lab.com
www.eslwonderland.com
The BBC ESL section
NPR in America
Secondly, academic writing is likely to be necessary. They have to write papers, essays, etc. This will partly depend on their level and part on their needs. However, a good academic writing textbook will help.
Thirdly, in reading they will need work with dense texts. There are all sorts of possible sources for this online: newspapers, the economist, etc; also have a look at academic reading books for help with lessons on things like skimming and scanning, deriving reading from context, and so forth.
Finally, save a copy of all the handouts you have to make (along with the texts/listenings) so you can use them again in similar courses. This kind of thing gets easier the more you have done it as it involves fine tunning not starting from scratch.
Good Luck
Stephen
However, if they are at a level close to where they need to be to study an MBA/Phd in English, then your work should be more focused on specific things they need to do on these courses. Firstly, academic listening may be a need. Possible sources online for academic listening would be http://www.englishlistening.com/index.jsp
www.esl-lab.com
www.eslwonderland.com
The BBC ESL section
NPR in America
Secondly, academic writing is likely to be necessary. They have to write papers, essays, etc. This will partly depend on their level and part on their needs. However, a good academic writing textbook will help.
Thirdly, in reading they will need work with dense texts. There are all sorts of possible sources for this online: newspapers, the economist, etc; also have a look at academic reading books for help with lessons on things like skimming and scanning, deriving reading from context, and so forth.
Finally, save a copy of all the handouts you have to make (along with the texts/listenings) so you can use them again in similar courses. This kind of thing gets easier the more you have done it as it involves fine tunning not starting from scratch.
Good Luck
Stephen