I have internet at my place now. Forgot to mention that. It was installed about two weeks ago. I can’t believe I’ve been here almost a month already.
Tomorrow I begin teaching English to my coworkers. (I thought it was today. No wonder no one got ready for class.) When I was first told I’d be teaching English, I thought I’d be teaching a handful of people, like maybe five at most. Turns out I’ll be teaching a classroom of 26 people, five days a week, 30 minutes per day, indefinitely.
Not a problem. Even though my biggest phobia in school was speaking in front of the classroom, this’ll be cake. Why? No idea. I just keep telling myself that. Nothing to worry about. Not a thing. As long as I don’t wet my pants or vomit or st-t-t-tutter, I’ll do f-f-f-fine.
I chose a small handbook called Business Spoken English to use as our textbook. It’s 300+ pages of nothing but phrases. Just A talking to B, and B responding to A. Not a single technical grammar lesson.
Teaching grammar might work for some people, but I bet repetition of sentence patterns is a better way for most. Plus I don’t want to answer questions like “why do you always end sentences with prepositions?!”
I’ve made a course syllabus, and a questionnaire so I can get an idea of everyone’s current English level. I just hope everyone can at least understand the questionnaire.
If anyone has advice on teaching English to a classroom of Chinese adults, lemme hear!
There’s a book about how to teach business english.
The author is Evan Frendo.Pearson Education Limited.
Hope it’ll useful for u and.
and here chinese techers teach english to chinese people.from what i know is written exercises+communicate with english.u can let ur coworkers talk with u in english not just when having classes
:)
Thanks for the tips Wendy. I wish they’d talk to me in English. :P
A certain English language cram school in Taiwan used to show short segments from “Three’s Company”, and then discuss what the characters were saying on that segment. Of course, the dialog can’t be too weird, and I don’t know if this works for pure beginners. But because the segment was generally funny, and the students probably wanted to understand what the laughing was about, they paid close attention.
Probably a little too advanced right now.
http://www.sinosplice.com/lang/guide-to-teaching-in-china/
Have fun. Although it’s talking more about people who already know some amount of English, it still has some general tips that might be helpful.
When you get grammar rule questions you can’t answer, you can bring them to me. I hold an MA in teaching ESL. I know the rules well. But don’t hit me with too many questions at once. Texts like the one you’re using mostly introduce vocabulary that may be useful, or may not be enough. If the book doesn’t give you different vocaublary to substitute in those phrases, you may want to come up with some of your own. When I was learning my second language, I really liked phrase repetition.