Good Lesson Plans

Hi again,

Melissa and I have been teaching oral English in China for almost an entire school year, and we've come to realize what works in the Chinese classroom and what doesn't work in the Chinese classroom. Actually, it's more of what's the easiest to do in the Chinese classroom... We're lazy!

We received a few weeks of training right before we joined our school last summer. In this training, they told us to divide the class into small groups for something called 'student-centered learning.' This didn't really work for a few reasons...

First off, to be able to accomplish this on a continual basis, we need complete control over our students, which is nearly impossible because a lot of them honestly don't even understand the words that are coming out of our mouths. Secondly, we are not regarded as real teachers by the students because we are not able to give them grades that count. Some students regularly sleep, read magazines, play games, listen to music, talk and generally goof off during our classes all because we don't grade them. We have to discipline them more than any other teacher, but we have the least sway in getting them in any real trouble. If we did decide to grade them, it would only be in the hopes of getting them to take our classes more seriously, and that's a gamble that we don't really want to try due to the fact that we would each have to grade over 700 students. This brings me to my third point, which is that there are over sixty students in each of our classes, so if we want to get them into any group activity, it's a lot of work. This means that we have to make sure the students are actually working (most of them are not), and we have to explain the instructions many times. Lastly, we've found that asking our students to be creative tends to be a headache. Having them 'imagine' anything in a group is a terrible idea because it's not only difficult to explain to the students, but it's also disappointing to hear their unoriginal ideas after all of the help we gave to them.

Okay, so you've heard about what doesn't work. Now, you will hear about what does work for the lazy oral English teacher. First and foremost, competitions are always a plus if they are accessible enough for even the slowest students. Competitions grip our students' attention almost as much as Kung Fu Panda! However, we need to go into the classroom with a lot of energy at first to get them to pay attention to the rules. After that, the hard work is generally over!

Secondly, games that involve the entire class are usually a good idea if the game is easy enough. The students' abilities vary wildly in each class, so we find it best to keep the game simple. When the entire class is involved (or is split into two or three teams), certain students are less shy about speaking. When we involve the entire class, we get the opportunity to force the weakest speakers to participate, who would be overshadowed by the stronger speakers during group-based activities. Most importantly, however, is that games that involve the entire class force our students' attention on us, rather than on their peers. It's much easier to manage a class that is focused in a single direction, rather than a class that is focused in twelve different directions.

We're thinking about posting some of the lesson plans that have worked in the past on this blog in the hopes that they may help someone, but Blogger is blocked in China, so that may have to wait.

What can I say? We're lazy!