Michelle's experience teaching English

#1. Michelle - at the photocopier...oh it's glamorous alright....problem is all the buttons are in Chinese!











#2. Michelle Work Station on the far left. It's a far cry from my last office space....but I don't spend nearly the time here as I did in the SCA office.






Okay, so I have received many questions about what it is exactly that we're doing "teaching English".....now that I've been doing it for a month, I feel ready to tell you a bit about it.
We work at a place called Inter English School. Our school is what's called a cram school. There are a lot of cram schools in Taiwan and the schools are quite competitive with each other to get students. Parents pay for their classes here. A cram school is kind of like an "after school - school" All of our young students attend a Chinese school where they study the usuals, math, science, Chinese, and probably other things too - I just don't know what. The other classes are predominantly in the morning and afternoon - that's why we usually don't start work until 3 or 4:50 - our students come to us in the evenings.
I am currently teaching two primary classes. The kids in these classes are probably between the ages of 7 and 11. In Taiwan they count the time that you're in the womb as a year...so when you're born you're already 1 year old. In these classes we are currently working on things like "What's this?" "It's a kite." or "It's a yo yo." and "Can she ride a bike?" "Yes, she can." or "No, she cannot".
I use a lot of flash cards, we play games on the board, we play racing or relay games, brain games like memory and we sing alot of songs. The words to a song I'm learning with my youngest class goes like this;
"How's the weather?
It's raining.
How's the weather?
It's raining.
How's the weather?
It's raining. It's raining today" (and we go through windy, sunny, snowy, etc.)
We sing it as a group and have made up actions to go along with it.

The kids here love to play games. Most of them are worked extremely hard in their other schools and games aren't often played (if at all) so we try and make things as fun as possible here. It's difficult though.. as we have a curriculum to cover within a set time period and the amount of info they cover in a short time is quite tremendous.

Taiwanese people are very 'results' oriented. It's common for a student to start crying if their marks are not high enough. They are also pre-occupied with "being number 1" and they like to make it very public who is number 1 whenever the opportunity arises. I've struggled with this a bit - because I believe in the philosphy that if you're trying and improving, and learning that's what impoortnat - the marks on the test aren't the be all and end all. But that is their culture - and as much as I don't agree with it I have to accept it.

I have two 'middle school or junior high school' classes. I have to admit that these are my least favorite. Junior high kids are so hard to motivate. Everything that I introduced is reacted to with groaning or moaning. It's hard to stay motivated myself with them. They're so worried about being cool and how everyone else is acting. It's quite interesting seeing the wide spectrum working with elementary, junior and high school students. You can really see the differences in growth, development and maturity. My junior high classes are learning things right now in the past tense, and reading for comprehension. So we are reading texts (usually short paragraphs) and then trying to answer questions. The other day we read about Panda bears, and they had to answer questions like "Do pandas hibernate?" "How much do pandas eat in a day?" "What do Pandas eat". The answers to all of these questions are in the text ... they just have to find it.
It's quite commical some of the sentences that they put together. I find it really interesting that not matter how well students understand an exercise in class - they have a really difficult time applying the same conept to real life. For instance we could spend an entire class looking at a picture and asking and answering questions like "What was she doing when the bird flew by? " "She was playing the piano." "What was he doing when the giraffe walked by?" "He was taking out the trash when the giraffe walked by." (the animals had escaped from the zoo in the picture) but then when I see a student in the hall and I say "Hey Sally, What were you doing today?" They look at me with this blank experession and have no idea what I just said to them. Yet as soon as we open our books they can relate the question to the picture. The learning that is taking place is very classroom restricted unfortunately. But it does improve the longer they study English.. and of course some of the kids are so smart and can speak English really really well.
High School kids. I have two classes with high school students. One is probably grades 8-10 and the other 11 and 12. We work alot on reading comprehension and creative and controlled writing. I like these classes alot because I don't have to stand at the front and wave my arms around. I can sit down and we can have conversations about things. My oldest class is my favorite - as there is no curriculum and I get to decide what we're going to do each day. In our last class I brought in one of my favorite songs and we listened to it and wrote down the lyrics and then we talked about what they meant. It's funny because they listen to a lot of English music here, wear shirts with English sayings, there's really alot of English everywhere - but most of the time they have no idea what it is saying. For instance we were in a grocery store a while ago and they were playing Eminem - his lyrics were definitely not suitable but the people had no idea what he was singing about. So I'm trying to help my students understand the English that is around them. They're alot of fun and I enjoy my time with them.

For each class that we teach we're given a syllabus which tells us what to teach when and what books to use. Materials usually consists of a student book with a corresponding workbook, a supplementary and complimentary phonics book, 1 or 2 reading books and a VL list (This is the vocabulary that they have to study and get tested on in every class). We're told when to teach what pages of each book and we just have to decide how we're going to teach the information we're going to cover (flash cards, listen and repeat activites, group work, pair work, etc.), and what games we want to play to make it interesting . In general they expect you to cover way too much in each class. Classes are 1 1/2 hours each and you take a ten minute break mid-way through. They are always jam packed and you're lucky if you make it to the end of your plan for the lesson.

I also teach two adult students in private lessons. Stella is 47 and I meet with her twice a week. She's been studying English for a couple of years now and enjoys learning vocabulary and learning how to pronounce English words. She and her husband own a company that makes 'exercise equipment and accessories'. I'm excited to find out more about her business and what they sell. We can't communicate very well, and her English is always a word or two mixed in with Chinese. Her best sentence is always "I forget."
I have also started teaching a 42 year old man named Paul. He's the president of a steel manufacturing company. He only started English with me last week so we're working our way through the alphabet, and phrases like "This is a butterfly." and "That is a lake," "I am a man" "My name is Paul." I taught him how to say his business name in English today... it was tough. "PAOS Precision Industry Company Limited." He's so smart and is learning so fast. I can't wait until we can really start to converse and understand each other. I'd love to learn more about his business - he works in Taiwan, China, and Japan and I think maybe he's trying to expand further - hence the English lessons.

All in all teaching is quite good and rewarding. It's an adjustment for me getting used to all of the prep work that I have to do for no pay in order to do my work. I know. I know. welcome to the world of teaching. A huge kudos to all of you teachers out there! I also mark exams, create questions for telephone testing (that's when the Teacher Assistants phone the students at home and test them in English), create questions for oral exams and anything else they try and get us to take off their shoulders.

There are lots of little quirks to the sytem at our school, and adjusting to a new work environment isn't always easy. I find the hardest part sharing an office with 7 other people - there are so many distractions.

Hopefully that's answered most of your questions. I think teaching will definitely get easier as we go along. I've been taking my TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) course online and now that I'm actually in the classroom it's all making so much more sense to me!
Cheers!
Michelle

p.s. for each class we have a Taiwanese Teachers Assistant. They mark the students homework, translate our instructions into English when necessary, and do a lot of other work that I'm not aware of yet. I know they work hard.