Dear Teaching Diary: More From My Third Week Teaching English in China

Periodically I write down my thoughts and reflections after a lesson, particularly if I think the lesson was a milestone of some sort.

I was taught on the CELTA that self-reflection is a great way to get better at teaching. It's particularly important if you teach somewhere like in a Chinese university. Generally speaking you rarely (if ever) get peer observed. So the only person who can really gauge your teaching effectiveness is you and maybe your students.

I wrote this log after one of the classes I took in the third week of teaching English in China. I taught 20 freshmen IT majors. I would say that the majority of students in this class are at Lower Intermediate level. There are a lot more boys than girls in this class. This is the reverse of the usual situation if you're teaching English at a Chinese university.

What We Did

We listened to a few homework presentations about a healthcare facility in the city in which they're studying. Then we did some of their course book about hotel bookings.

What Worked

I tried a game from a different book: 700 Classroom Activities - Instant Lessons for Busy Teachers by David Seymour and Maria Popova.

There was a bit more engagement than with my previous attempt at doing a writing + speaking game with this class.

What Didn't Work

The presentations were pretty bad so I called a halt to them after the 3rd group. I was also reluctant to let them plug USB memory sticks into my own PC as this is very risky.

The game was a little difficult. I should have graded the examples to make them a bit easier.

Not all of the students were on task. I don’t know if this was because they didn't understand the instructions, or they were thinking about something else.

This group of students don't seem to be as imaginative as the accountancy or business English students.

What to Work On

So from the game and the book's grading system I am pretty sure they are at a pre-intermediate level, which gives me a better idea of what future activities will be suitable for them.

In future I'll need to avoid scheduling presentations in rooms without their own IT equipment. Or maybe they could have plugged in the USB devices elsewhere.

This cohort of students need a lot of work to get them making good presentations. I should consider running a class about presentation skills as these are so vital in the IT industry (e.g. Agile development daily standups). The accountancy sophomore students were much better.

Doing more games is a good idea. I should pay more attention to instruction setting and maybe also write the examples on the board or put on a PowerPoint.

Postscript

Well in this lesson IT equipment issues reared their ugly head. In this particular classroom there is projector but no computer. So you have to bring your own. I realised I didn't like the idea of students putting their own USB sticks into my brand new and very expensive laptop.

But a bigger issue was that the presentations were on the whole pretty dire. I don't know what students do in High School in China but I'm pretty sure they never get much practice at giving presentations.

So from this class onwards I abandoned homework setting and presentations. It was back to basics. One of my colleagues teaches another cohort of this group and I agree with him that they need to go back to the very basics, like how to meet and greet people.

I might have ditched the coursebook for a lot of the classes for this stream of students, but I did use one book extensively throughout their semester: 700 Classroom Activities by Seymour and Popova. This is a really excellent book, particularly if you're going to be teaching ESL conversation classes in a country like China. I like that the lessons are themed by topic, so if you're teaching a lesson on a particular theme then you can often drop an activity or two from this book into your lessons.

If you bring one book with you to China, then make sure it's this one:

This particular cohort of students have been a lot tougher to teach than the other classes. Their English is far worse. They don't put much effort into class. Absence from class was four times the average of my sophomore Business English classes. They did actually do very well in the final exam. But throughout the semester it was clear they were just coasting.

In fact this class are such a challenge that another teacher colleague of mine, let's call him Chad, refuses to teach this class altogether. He has been here longer than I have and he now cherry picks the students he wants to teach. Ultimately this means smaller class sizes of students who speak better English.

All well and good but you're not going to develop as a teacher if you don't challenge yourself.

I have developed a pretty good rapport with this group of students. As I used to work in IT, I feel their pain at learning programming languages. Now we joke about it in practically every class. If you've studied or worked in a particular field then this can be very useful when it comes to teaching students who are studying a particular discipline.

I guess one problem with this class is that most of the students seem really lacking in motivation. I don't know too much about the way kids in China choose their university or course. But my understanding is that they choose the school and what they want to study. But then it's down to the school to assign the students to individual courses. Sometimes they'll end up studying something completely different. Can you imagine a Western teenager applying to study for a BA in Acting and end up having to do a four year BSc Computer Science course?

The thing with IT is that there is just so much demand for graduates and so few kids want to study it that in this field there are going to be a larger than average of number of students who were pushed onto the course because all the other courses were full.

I have asked my students why they chose to study IT and in many cases they said their parents told them to study it. They do also know it's a good thing to go into from the money perspective.

Most of them have really struggled with the maths and programming courses this year, so maybe realisation is setting in that IT is not the land of milk and honey that they thought it might be.

Well I hope they stick with it because I had a pretty good 20 years working in IT. I made enough cash to quit the 9-5 at the age of 45 and make a long term thing of teaching English overseas. I bought an apartment and it's now mortgage free. I have enough investments that I can save my entire teaching salary. I started my own software business. I worked for some household names. I met some household names. I travelled all over Europe on business. And I had some memorable life experiences along the way.

Dear Teaching Diary: My Third Week Teaching English in China

Periodically I write down my thoughts and reflections after a lesson, particularly if I think the lesson was a milestone of some sort.

I was taught on the CELTA that self-reflection is a great way to get better at teaching. It's particularly important if you teach somewhere like in a Chinese university. Generally speaking you rarely (if ever) get peer observed. So the only person who can really gauge your teaching effectiveness is you and maybe your students.

I wrote this log after one of the classes I took in the third week of teaching English in China. I taught 47 sophomore Accountancy majors. I would say that the majority of students in this class are Upper Intermediate. They're generally a little better at English than my Business English majors. And they need to be! These students need to pass tough ACCA exams that are set in English. If they want to make megabucks as international finance accountants working in Shanghai, then their English needs to be excellent.

What We Did

We mostly listened to presentations gave as homework the previous week. Students had to form groups and write a presentation about a famous person who they admired.

What Worked

The presentations were very well researched and were much better than my freshmens class's efforts. I was impressed that a couple of the groups chose less well known Chinese personalities. One was a rice scientist, the other made a range of hot sauces. The video the group showed with the person eating various food with hot sauce on it was very well received by the audience.

At one point the room's computer died. I made a good recovery of showing new material while I repaired it.

What Didn't Work

There are so many students that reviewing all the presentations too most of the lesson. As a result there wasn’t much chance to see new material. The other classmates got bored and weren't really engaged.

The new material about Made in China didn't work that well. The Experiencing English coursebook really is uninspiring in its choice of topics. And the listening tasks in the book are far too difficult for the students.

What to Work On

Two major issues came up in this class:

1. There is far too much noise from the class when students are giving presentations. In part this is due to the students' lack of presence. Only one student had really good presence while presenting, and he was excellent.
2. There is too much reading PowerPoint slides aloud!

I should try and get the audience more involved. Maybe I should solicit questions from the audience and score these rather than those doing the presentation.

I should figure out how to get students to do an unscripted presentation.

Postscript

Well I did eventually ditch the coursebook, and went my own way with lesson plans I made up or found online.0

I do still get students to make group presentations. However, I try to get the audience more involved. I will definitely ramp this up next semester.

One thing that is still very rare in any of my classes are students who have good presence. Only one student is of TED Talk standard when it comes to giving presentations. This is an incredibly valuable business skill to possess. In my own IT career I spent 20 years at the bottom rung of the ladder partly because I lacked the communication skills required to climb that ladder.

The hot sauce video was indeed really good and I've found that food is always a good topic to show in class. I rounded off the semester with a Christmas lesson. About the best task in that lesson was this Powerpoint slide:

I stopped setting homework for this cohort of students. I found out they had 32 hours of classes a week - 8 hours a week more than my IT students. They don't need any more homework! As my classes are very much bolt-ons to their essential topics of accounting and finance I decided to stop setting homework assignments. A bigger reason was that I found homework wasn't generally all that good for getting them to do the thing that's most essential for them - unscripted speaking.

By the end of this semester I was giving them unscripted tasks to do in class. The result was that they got more speaking practice, and had more time out of class to study on their own.

One other observation - accountancy is a great career to go into! With hindsight I'd wished I'd studied either accountancy or law at university. Instead I floated into IT which pays quite well but changes very fast and is far more age discriminatory than either law or accountancy.

Dear Teaching Diary: My Second Week Teaching English in China!

Periodically I write down my thoughts and reflections after a lesson, particularly if I think the lesson was a milestone of some sort.

I was taught on the CELTA that self-reflection is a great way to get better at teaching. It's particularly important if you teach somewhere like in a Chinese university. Generally speaking you rarely (if ever) get peer observed. So the only person who can really gauge your teaching effectiveness is you and maybe your students.

I wrote this log after one of the classes I took in the second week of teaching English in China. I taught 36 sophomore Business English majors. I would say that the majority of students in this class are lower Upper Intermediate (if that is a thing). Like most Asian English learners, their spoken English lags their reading and writing.

This class doesn't have a textbook. At first I was worried about this, but as the semester progressed I used the other classes' textbooks less and less each week.

What We Did

In the first half of the lesson the students showed their presentations from the previous class. I got them to make a comedy sketch based on a UK TV show I showed them in the previous class.

In the second half we did some listening to clips about education.

What Worked

The presentations from last week were on the whole very good. About half the groups made very imaginative presentations. The students really enjoyed this task.

At last I have got the students speaking. Some of the students are very good indeed.

The students who made videos made an excellent job. However I should probably specify that presentations are made in class unless the class is specifically about making a video.

The listening tasks were on the whole OK. They did prefer the listening tasks where younger people were speaking.

What Didn't Work

I think 3 students missed doing the group presentation. It's hard to manage so many groups, especially as I don't have a printer to print class lists.

The attempt to set them an in class group speaking task was a disaster. I need to rethink this.
Timekeeping was an issue in this class and I overran when I was worried about underrunning.

What to Work On

I should ask the presenting students some questions at the end in order to get them practicing unscripted dialogue.

I need to read Teaching Listening by JJ Wilson in order to make the listening tasks more worthwhile.

When playing videos for listening I should always set some sort of task. Otherwise the students get bored, unless the video is particularly interesting.

Postscript

Teaching Listening by JJ Wilson is still on my reading list. I soon realised that my absolute priority was to learn more about how to teach speaking more effectively.

I no longer set homework. Partly because I feel a little guilty about how much other homework the students get. The students in this class also come from less wealthy homes and many have part-time jobs. A bigger reason is that I've found homework isn't particularly effective at helping them improve their English speaking. If you give the students a group speaking presentation to prepare, then they will only end up writing down huge chunks of dialogue. That's not really what I want them to be doing. I want them to talk completely unscripted. And for that it's better just to set classwork assignments where they have minimal time to prepare.

To manage the large groups I teach, I now use two computers in class: the classroom one and my own. I use the classroom computer to show videos and Powerpoints using the overhead projector. I also use it for listening tasks. I use my own computer to keep track of students using the class register Excel spreadsheet. In most classes I try to write down some scores for the students' classwork. This also avoids having to set too much homework, or have too much reliance on end of semester exams.

For listening tasks I have found out they tend to prefer listening to people their own age. So I always bear this in mind when I'm looking for warmers.

If groups are presenting then I've gotten into the habit of getting the audience to ask the presenting group questions. This keeps the audience on their toes. I can also log scores of their English ability. Of course it also minimises teacher talk during the lesson. I'm purely there to direct the speaking. On the downside I've found the questions they ask aren't always that good, and a lot of students ask the same question. I'll definitely improve on this during the next semester.

As for task setting during video watching - I don't always do this. Particularly if they're just used as warmers. But I have made sure that I select videos that are particularly interesting to them. I've found the Ellen chat show clips on YouTube to be exactly the type of video I need to use as warmers. I use them a lot.

Dear Teaching Diary: My Second Lesson Teaching English in China!

Periodically I write down my thoughts and reflections after a lesson. I was taught on the CELTA that self-reflection is a great way to get better at teaching. It's particularly important if you teach somewhere like in a Chinese university. Generally speaking you rarely (if ever) get peer observed. So the only person who can really gauge your teaching effectiveness is you and your students.

I wrote this log after my second class teaching English in China. I taught 20 freshmen students on what was their very first day of university classes. For most of the students I was the first foreign national teacher they had ever had.

What We Did

I introduced myself. We also did the coursebook Real Listening & Speaking 3 Chapters 1 - 2 where are you from and shopping.

What Worked

My lead in (about me true/false) worked well.

This is a much better book! Both topics were interesting for the students. And it’s at the right level for the students – maybe even a little too easy for them. We covered more material than I expected.

I numbered the listening clips so I was able to find them easily.

I put some new vocabulary on the board.

Most of the students got the answers although a few of the boys struggled a bit. Chunking helped with the harder listening activities.

They liked the shopping related videos I showed from The Two Ronnies, especially the 4 Candles Sketch. They were perfect for lead-ins, especially as the students were sleepy after lunch.

I successfully took the class register.

What Didn't Work

I need to work on setting pair work and group activities. One activity worked, the other was a complete flop.

There were a lot of students not really paying attention. It's harder to monitor them in this classroom, and the class size is quite big.

What to Work On

Again, I need to prep the classes so I know the answers to the questions in advance.

I should think of some activities related to any videos I show.

I should remember to set some homework that has clear goals. Simply "look at this website" is just too vague.

Postscript

I have of course noticed that the more times you do the same activity, the better you become at it. So recycling lesson plan tasks has really got me through the semester.

I have found it much tougher to teach the freshmen compared to the sophomore students. The freshmen don't talk much and they find it hard to maintain attention. In fact I found it easier to teach 47 sophomore students than I did a class of 18 freshmen.

I now know that initial impressions about coursebooks are very accurate. So hats off to my CELTA tutors for training me well. I hit the ground running and in my first week pretty much identified all the strengths and weaknesses of the two sets of coursebooks I was asked to teach from.

I don't like teaching 20 students in a classroom made for 50. So a couple of times this semester I have ended up making students move closer to the front of the class.

I noticed in this lesson that the students liked the video clip I showed them. So for each class I try to find a couple of short videos to use as warmers.

In my first lesson I noticed the girls were on average better than the boys. I say on average because the girls tended to be precisely that - average. ALL of my superstar English students in this semester were boys, despite there being far less of them. I believe that this echoes the exam results I saw back in the UK when I worked for an educational consultancy; boys do worse than girls but when boys are good, they are very good indeed.

Dear Teaching Diary: My First Lesson Teaching English in China!

Periodically I write down my thoughts and reflections after a lesson. I was taught on the CELTA that self-reflection is a great way to get better at teaching. It's particularly important if you teach somewhere like in a Chinese university. Generally speaking you rarely (if ever) get peer observed. So the only person who can really gauge your teaching effectiveness is you and your students.

I wrote this log after my first class. I taught 40+ sophomore year students.

What We Did

Experiencing English book 3 chapter 1 about global warming. We started on book 3 because book 1 hadn't been delivered to the students yet. Hey - welcome to China!

What Worked

My lead in game [guess what's true/false about me] worked reasonably well.

All of the students wrote their names on a piece of paper like I asked them too.

I did OK at chunking the listening clips, but they still found it hard.

The book's gap fill exercises worked quite well.

They were fairly interested when I was searching Baidu for photos of a White Christmas. Not many students have seen snow in real life.

My own chosen video about Global Warming was better than the book material – I could have made a lot more of it to help make a better lead-in.

What Didn’t Work

The coursebook isn't that great. The level is too high for the students and some of the listening exercises are hard even for me. Also there is lots of weird stuff (e.g. wtf is a Green Christmas – it doesn’t explain what it is).

The students had a go at working in pairs but they really struggled to find examples of global warming around them.

Really these students were not at all interested in the topic of Global Warming.

There were a lot of students not really paying attention. It's harder to monitor them in this classroom, and the class size is so big.

I couldn't take the register as I didn’t have a list of students, and there were too many to manually check.

Pair work is difficult in this classroom due to the 3 + 2 + 2 + 3 seating arrangement.

Aaargh there’s no blackboard in this classroom.

What to Work on

I need to prep the classes so I know the answers to the questions in advance.

I need to look for more activities relating to the lesson topic.

I need find a list of students for this class.

Postscript

3 months later and things have become a lot clearer. I did eventually get a class list and found out there were 47 students in this class. 47 is way too many to have a truly effective lesson, but I have done my best.

It turns out my initial impressions were correct about the textbook, and I stopped using it mid-way through the semester. I did more listening tasks from the book, and they continued to struggle with the material. In fact I also struggled with some of the listening tasks - and I'm a native speaker!

I did get much better at choosing topics that were engaging for the students. But with 47 students to entertain, it was never likely to be the greatest class I ever taught.