Pictionary a Chinese Stick Person
My last lesson with these students was supposed to be fun. Pictionary was supposed to be fun! But most of the kids don’t get it. I have words like “generous, polite, cousin, and handsome” that are, admittedly, kind of hard to draw, but that’s the whole point, and yet the students don’t even try. Usually, they’ll just draw two stick people standing next to each other, then shake their hands frustratedly while their team has no idea what to guess. Even the girl who was drawing “handsome” neglected to give the guy a face!
One of the words I threw in there was “great grandmother,” since family members was a recurring topic in our lessons. Every student who had this word drew… two stick people, of course. Neither one of the stick people looked old. But one of them was always holding a paper. I could not figure out why she was always holding a paper! So I discussed this with my girlfriend after work, and she said, “Well, you know, if you are great at something, you usually have a paper to show for it.”
EFL Adverb Game
One of the few benefits to teaching primary was how the students had no problem getting up in front of class and doing something silly. In middle school, the students can’t even stay at their desk and answer a simple question without getting red in the face. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised by everyone’s reluctance to play something like charades, though the first few classes gave me a false sense of success. They actually had fun.
To begin, I asked the class to brainstorm ten different adverbs and wrote these on separate cards. Next, I had them give me ten actions and wrote these on a different set of cards. One student then came to the front and drew two cards: one action, one adverb. They had to act out what the cards said, and the class would guess. Obviously, it’s an easy activity, but the fun lies in some of the crazy combinations that turn up:
sleep angrily
surf the Internet crazily
smile slowly
kill people carefully
play hide and seek carelessly
It would be a great game to play at a party, but… most of my students weren’t too thrilled. They would draw the cards, fidget for about two minutes, show the cards to everyone on the front row, fidget for another two minutes, then start talking in Chinese and go sit down. There was one class, though, that was eagerly waiting for someone to draw the “dance” card. When a boy finally did, their Chinese teacher came into the room and said, “The students have a test and must go now.” He didn’t dance. Everyone was disappointed.
Homework as a Language Opportunity
When I first started giving homework assignments, I was mostly interested in just forcing the students to think about my lessons after class. But there’s more to it than that. We spend the first ten minutes of class presenting random assignments, and that’s ten minutes I don’t have to prepare new material for!
Seriously, though, I find presenting homework to be a beneficial exercise in getting the students to listen to each other for a change. I know the school system wants them to listen to me for the entire 45 minutes, but once I leave, they’re going to be saying, “Pardon?” to every English speaker they know. So after a student reads what they wrote, I’ll ask several other students to repeat or explain what they heard. Now that they know I will do this, it’s one of the few times the whole class is actually quiet.
Many of my assignments have been based on the students drawing something (like an island or a monster) and then describing it. These are the kind of assignments that don’t even feel like homework, because the students jump at a chance to be creative for once (their Chinese teachers would never let them draw a monster in class). When I asked students to read some of the first assignments we did, nobody wanted to volunteer. But when it came time to draw their island or monster on the chalkboard, I had to turn several away, because too many wanted to participate.
What?! Students Don’t Like Homework?!
Oral English class with Mr. Nielsen is pretty much seen as playtime with Mr. Laowai. I know the kids don’t take my class seriously and discard everything we’ve talked about as soon as the bell rings. Now that the semester is nearing the end (still one more month to go, but… I’ve been counting down for a while), I’ve gone back to my old lessons to review. Wow, it’s sad how much they’ve forgotten.
To force them to actually practice what we’ve gone over, I’ve started giving small homework assignments. I know the students are already swamped with homework, so the last five minutes of class is to give them a head start. The first time we did this, they didn’t think I was serious and showed up next week with nothing done. The students who didn’t do it got to stand in back of the class for 15 minutes. Ha! Mr. Nielsen is serious, after all.
The current homework assignment is about the differences between American and British words. It’s good to know, since most of their school books are based solely on the latter. I wanted them to write a conversation between two people (one American, one British) using at least eight of the words we discussed. During the five minutes of work time, I walked around the class and saw some amusing dialogues:
B: Hi.
A: Hi.
B: Nice to meet you.
A: Nice to meet you, too.
B: How are you?
A: I’m fine, thank you. And you?
B: I’m good.
Stop, stop, stop! Let’s not waste time on greetings when all you have to do is use the vocabulary words! And that’s exactly what the next student was trying to do, however lazily:
A: Where is the elevator?
B: Pardon?
A: The elevator. Where is it?
B: Elevator?
A: Yes.
B: Pardon?
A: The elevator.
B: What is an elevator?
Nice try, but you can’t just use the word “elevator” eight times.
Teaching English by Accident
Accidents aren’t a subject that come up often in EFL lessons. The books usually stick to weather, greetings, and school life. If these are students who want to eventually work for a foreign company or at least have foreign friends, though, it’s helpful to know what somebody means when they start screaming, “I cut my finger! I cut my finger!” Well, maybe that story tells itself. But the sign that reads “Danger: Electric Shock” is also of importance, right?
The problem with teaching accidents is that most of the students have no prior exposure to the vocabulary. You end up doing a lot of explaining in the beginning, a lot of, “What’s this? A pan. What could happen? It could burn you,” which is a surefire way to lose their attention. The only way to get that attention back is to rip your shirt open and start howling, “I’m on fire! I’m on fire!”
As part of my lesson, I drew a guy walking but who wasn’t paying attention. That’s it. Then I asked the class what things could be in front of him. They called out answers like a dog, a river, a car, a tree, another person. So I would draw these things and talk about the accident that could happen. The dog could bite him. He could fall into the river. He could run into the other person. And now they’re learning things they picked.
Debating with EFL Students
Debates are occasionally hilarious activities to do with an EFL class and occasionally hair-pullingly frustrating depending on how old your students are and how well they embrace make-believe. I once tried setting up silly debates like “should money be edible?” or “should people be required to wear a bucket on their head?” but most of the students spent the whole time complaining about how this didn’t make sense. Even when I do normal things, though, like to wear or not to wear socks, I come up against a lot of reluctance to voice an opinion.
This last lesson, I tried to make the debate more approachable by splitting the class into four groups and assigning each one an unfavorable weather condition (rainy, windy, snowy, foggy). They then had to come up with reasons why this was the best, and I awarded points every time I thought they made a good case. The majority of my classes got into it, but one class would not participate at all. Snowy managed to get three points, but everyone else only had one. So they would know I didn’t appreciate their apathy, I then announced, “The winning team gets to sit for the rest of class. Everyone else… stand up.”
I know, that sounds terrible. In my defense, though, the Chinese teachers use standing as punishment all the time. I’m entitled to use it, too! But standing is so ingrained into the school system, my students think they have to remain standing if they couldn’t answer a question. This… I don’t get. They ignore every other rule when with me (rising and greeting the teacher at the beginning of class, keeping their damn mouths shut, etc.), but standing when called on… man, that one’s hard to get over.
Come to my Party or Get Out of Class
In college, my Chinese teacher did a lot of activities where we were free to walk around the room, talking to other students (in Chinese) to find out information. I thought this was a great way to force us to practice new phrases with each other, but I’ve been hesitant to try the same approach with my middle school students. I knew giving them time to do an activity like this would result in at least half the class chatting in Chinese. Even when you expect that kind of behavior, though, it’s still pretty aggravating when it finally happens.
The activity at hand was about inviting classmates to your party, keeping track of how many people can come, filling in what parties you were invited to, and letting others know you can’t go to theirs, because you are busy. Students were supposed to write down something similar to my mock schedule before the chaos began, changing the days to fit their own whims:
Sun - busy (visiting grandpa)
Mon
Tues
Wed - my party
Thurs
Fri - busy (moving to new apt)
Sat
A few of the classes actually liked the activity, as it became a competition to see who could invite the most people. Most classes, however, were pretty apathetic, and two classes in particular wouldn’t even get out of their seats. Those students quickly asked their neighbor, “Saturday?” and answered, “No,” then spent the rest of the time talking about math homework. It got so frustrating walking up and down the aisles, seeing all the students who didn’t write a schedule or who were just doing the exercise in Chinese.
It’s counterproductive to have to continually remind your class, “The whole purpose of doing this is to practice English. Stop talking in Chinese!” At that point, you may ask yourself, “Why am I even here?” I got so upset with one class, though, I didn’t just ask that to myself. I told them, “If you’re not going to do the activity, then I’m not going to stay.” And I walked out two minutes before the bell rang. Man, it felt good to see the dumbfounded looks on their faces as I packed up my things and left. You’re all un-invited to my party.
Showing Movies in the EFL Classroom
My Spanish teacher from high school used to reach into his Disney vault every Friday and pick out a nice pelicula to subject us to. As a student, I loved these days, because I could play Bomberman on my TI calculator after making a quick list of 20 words I recognized from the movie. As a teacher, I realize this may not be the best way to practice English. The dialogue is usually too fast for students to keep up with, but if you turn on Chinese subtitles, then nobody pays attention to what is being spoken. I run into the same problem when I watch a Chinese movie with English subtitles.
Now if I were a cool teacher, I wouldn’t worry about this, just play a movie, and let the students sleep during class.
But I’m not.
There is some merit in letting your class watch a film, then asking them to describe it afterwards. A 90-minute movie takes three class periods to get through, though, and a lot of details are lost in the wait. Even with a shorter TV show, it’s hard to remember the smaller nuances of what happened that add up to great fluency. That’s why I love Shaun the Sheep. Every episode is only seven minutes long and contains no talking, so the emphasis is all on the actions. I hate frequently starting/stopping a movie, but in the case of Shaun, the story’s over, and the next one won’t start until we’ve spent seven (or more) minutes talking about what we just saw.
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