Archives for Category "Teaching"
Point and Click Teaching
Running low on free talk topics, I suddenly had a brilliant idea: play a point-and-click adventure game with the students!
This seemed like it would go over well, because it focuses on talking about who to talk to, what to talk about, what to pick up, what to use, where to go, etc. etc. Sure, the dialogue in Sam and Max is a bit sophisticated, but I was only eight years old when I first played it. I hardly understood anything they said at that age, and I still thought the game was hilarious.
Taking note of the magic formula, though, where, the more faith you have in something, the more likely it is to fail, I should have suspected Sam and Max would freeze up halfway through the presentation. This is when the improvisational skills Chinese people think we all have finally kick in. I just reviewed everything we had done up to that point and why, then talked about bathrooms in America and China (it relates, it totally does).
Whew. Those are the moments that make lesser men poop their pants. The rest of us somehow stifle it until after class.
Say Frustrated in Chinese
The school is hurting for foreign teachers right now and is always asking me if I’m going to continue to work part time in the fall. Um… why would I want to teach more English in my free time? What they don’t understand is that I didn’t come to China to make lots of money. If money was the object, I could be making 2-3 times as much back home. I tell them I will consider it, but, unless I find myself completely bored out of my mind on the weekends, I wouldn’t count on it.
In fact, they always bring this up at the worst possible times, like shortly after they dumped more free talks on me. Let’s think about this for a moment. You give me more of the classes that I hate doing above all others, and then you want me to stick around for another semester? You’ve got the concept of bait and switch all wrong.
I’m a whiner when it comes to doing free talks, because I end up spending my days off preparing for them. I really want to study and practice Chinese, but it’s hard to do so when I’m engulfed so deep in English. The last thing I want to do after working in English all day is dive into another language. I just found a new lessons website, too, but when I try to look at it between classes, students want to talk English with me.
I did go down to China Mobile, though, to put more money on my phone. While my conversation with the receptionist was brief, I was totally prepared to do this in Chinese and didn’t even realize she knew English. Let’s watch:
“Ni hao.”
“Hello.”
“Wo yao songgei qian… nei ge… nei ge… wode shouji.”
“Okay. Your number.”
“Shenme?”
“The number.”
“Oh. Oh! English. Uh… here.”
At this rate, learning Chinese looks grim. Fortunately, things will be much different when I move back to the Star school. In fact, I asked about the possibility of taking Chinese classes through Star. While lessons aren’t available to foreign teachers, I was told I could sit in on the first grade classes. I will fit right in.
Rags to Riches
Yeah, so, like, the other day was a bad day and all, topped off by the school changing my free days again after I had already made plans to go out with some of my students. I didn’t think the following day would go over well, either. I mean, I was out partying the night before, and the day sure started sour when I had the most aggravating time ever trying to teach a group of beginning adults how to play Bingo. Bingo, for heaven’s sake!
But then the next three classes were hilarious. You know you’re making progress when you can teach English and get the students to laugh at the same time. I had a one-on-one class where we were looking over a fictional monthly expenses chart. The chart said this guy spent $70 a month on toiletries, so my student suggested he must be wiping with dollar bills.
What really helped my mood was getting my passport back. Finally, I am a complete expatriate! The passport couldn’t have come at a better time, too. Last night, I was down to eight yuan. I had no money to do anything. So I walked all over town looking for an Internet bar, but by the time I found one, I couldn’t even afford to go in. I saw a sign for bowling, though, so I thought I would check it out. Unfortunately, the directions to get in were very confusing, and I ended up walking down some rather scary alleys. But I wasn’t worried. If anyone mugged me, they’d only get eight yuan out of the deal.
I did find the bowling alley, and as soon as I walked in, the owner tried to cajole me into buying a game. I said, “Wo meiyou qian, keshi wo yao kan.” (I don’t have any money, but I want to watch.) She nodded, and I watched a game of bowling, knowing that tomorrow (today) would be different, because I would (I do) finally have money.
Korobeiniki
Along with the standard World English classes, I also teach a children’s class 2-3 times a week. The children’s class isn’t really part of the World program, so I don’t have a lesson manual to follow. As is the case with most children’s classes, though, I think they’re just happy to have a foreigner go in there and put on a song and dance for 45 minutes.
One of the activities I did with them was give them two pictures of two different families and have them memorize what the family members were doing. They hated it, naturally. So the next day, I brought the pictures back and said, “We’re going to cut these pictures up to make a puzzle.” They liked the idea of destroying the pictures. And when I said we were making a puzzle, the boys thought it would be hilarious to tear the pictures up into as small of pieces as possible.
I was originally going to have the teams exchange puzzles with each other, but when I saw what the boys had done to their puzzle, I thought it would be much more entertaining to say, “All right, now put your own puzzle back together.” They weren’t laughing anymore!
The Monkey Kings of English
Business is booming at World English, but we don’t have enough teachers to meet the demand. So they try to be sneaky and sign us up for six classes a day. Yeah, that’s not going to happen. Even five classes is hard to do, especially when they’re back-to-back and you get 30 minutes in between to find something to eat. Not even Domino’s can help you, now.
But it’s hard for me to complain, considering English teachers get paid so well and still work fewer hours than the typical Chinese job. In fact, I was talking to a friend a few days ago, and the six-days-a-week job she has now only started at 1,000 yuan a month (an improvement from her job at the DVD store where she made 800 a month, or little over $100).
That’s rough.
I’m told it’s pretty expensive to attend our program, too. Either the students come from rich families, or they’re making huge sacrifices to be here. It’s sad, because the lesson manuals we are supposed to follow are full of errors and often don’t lend themselves to an hour of content (one lesson is missing entirely from the book). But with the advanced classes, it’s more beneficial to just chat, anyway. In one advanced class, we spent 20 minutes randomly talking about the Monkey King!
Wonderful World of Training Schools
When I was told I would work at a training school for the summer, I imagined something relatively small and obscure. World English is not so much. I’m surprised by how many people are employed here and how many official World English pens I’m able to throw away because they run out of ink so damn quickly.
There are two other full-time foreign teachers, and we are expected to be on duty from 1:00 to 9:00 every day (except for our two days off, which keep getting moved around). We might only have 3-5 classes a day, though, and I’ve had it pretty good so far. My main responsibility is the kids’ class, a job not highly coveted around here. They don’t know what they’re missing. The kids know a surprising amount of English, so I can actually do fun things with them, and it doesn’t (completely) blow up in my face.
The adult classes, on the other hand, are more fun, because it’s all about shooting as much bull as possible. We have lesson books to guide our hour-long classes, but many of the lessons are ridiculous (the “At the Park” lesson, for instance, has nothing to do with the park), and it’s easier to just jump on a tangent and never look back. I always take a stack of giant flashcard pictures with me to fill the last few minutes of class, because there are so many things to talk about with them. What is this man doing? Why is he baking cookies? Who are the cookies for? Why is he wearing a glove on his hand? Why, why, why?!
There was a lot of pressure put on me before I started teaching, though. My first lesson was a demo free talk. On my way to class, the head tutor stopped me and said, “There will be a lot of parents coming to see the new teacher. Please make it a good presentation, okay? Maybe you can change your topic to be more interesting!” Uh… I’m on the way to class… I can’t change it now. I don’t know where they get this idea, but Chinese people seem to think it’s easy for foreigners to come up with teaching materials on the fly.
It’s not.
In fact, my lesson, which I spent almost three hours putting together, only lasted a half hour. Luckily, I was prepared for this and filled the second half with nothing but talk of superheroes and villains. This is my biggest concern about teaching: filling a whole hour. It’s a lot harder than you think when you’re in front of an audience and burning through your material like a G.I. Joe strapped to a firecracker. Happy 4th of July.
