Musings and chronicles on life, work, film, culture, politics, etc.
05 Mar 2013 Leave a Comment
in culture, expat life, Teaching EFL Tags: China, college, EFL, teaching
The new semester has started and I’ve got freshmen with some interesting English first names: Brown, Lincoln, Neutron, Patient (a boy), Amy (a boy), John Smith, Susa Clear.
I’m not sure where Susa Clear got her name.
I do tell the boys who chose feminine names like Amy, that that’s a girls’ name. For names like Neutron, I let them go in the name of student-centered teaching. I may say, “If you want to change your name at any time, it’s okay.”
15 Nov 2012 1 Comment
in education, expat life, food, opinion, Review Tags: EFL, ESL, Learning English, restaurant, restaurant reviews
As part of a unit on travel, I had my students make restaurant review videos. Each group had to choose a restaurant and review its foods. Here are some of the results:
There were 15 groups and not one tried a foreign restaurant. Jinan has Italian, Thai, Western and French food. I had hoped they would, but I didn’t insist on that. Where’s the sense of adventure?
Well, they do eat donkey, snake and cicadas here so I can’t say people aren’t adventurous eaters.
30 Aug 2012 2 Comments
in expat life, Teaching EFL, welcome to my life Tags: Asia, Cell Phones, changes, China, Colleges and Universities, education, EFL, power, shock, society, Telephone, transferable skills
I had my first power struggle of the year in class today. I don’t recall any problems like this last year and they’re rare in China. I’ve got a new class and another class with students I’ve taught before. The new class has a lot of willing students of varying levels and a few who lean towards incorrigible. Four were absent the first couple days which is unusual for China. Truants tend to show up the first week and then occasionally if there’s a speech they must give or a test to, in their case fail. It puzzles me that they bother, but they do.
After I asked the administrators to see if these students had transferred out, the four appeared, no doubt unwillingly. I almost wish I hadn’t said anything. They act like middle school troublemakers, which I suppose isn’t as bad as acting like high school rebels. These boys giggle and poke each other when they aren’t playing with their phones. While some students were giving speeches I saw some kids playing with cell phones so I confiscated them promising to return them at the end of the class. I hoped to nip this problem in the bud.
During the break, the boy whose phone I had took his back. When class resumed I asked the students where the phone was. No one said anything. Eventually one boy said it was his phone and he wouldn’t use it. I told him he needed to put the phone back on my podium. Defiant, he refused. He was really quite a jerk about it.
I don’t believe in losing my cool, but I also didn’t want to cave in setting a bad precedent for the semester. I repeated my directions to place the phone back on the podium and said he’d have it at the end of class. He refused. Then I said unless the phone was forfeited, the end of the week video would not be shown and we would do work in the book instead.
That worked as his classmates urged him to forfeit the phone. My training as an elementary teacher again pays off as I teach in a Chinese university.
My first group of students who graduated last year has said that the “younger” generation is more selfish and rebellious. It seems like I got a taste of that today. I don’t think this group will be easy. I hope I’m wrong.
07 Dec 2011 Enter your password to view comments.
in bad jobs, blogthings, society Tags: EFL, KNUE, Korea National University of Education
25 Mar 2011 Leave a Comment
in Teaching EFL Tags: bad EFL jobs, EFL, job hunting
There are so many dodgy EFL jobs out there and good programs like JET or Fulbright’s English Teaching Assistant can’t possibly hire everyone so how do you separate the good from the bad from the ugly?
24 Mar 2011 Leave a Comment
in Teaching EFL Tags: EFL, Nepal, Teaching Conference/Convention
NELTA – Nepal English Language Teachers Association
I listened to two small sessions at NELTA one was on Critical and Creative Thinking given by an American woman who taught for 18 years in the US and then came to Nepal for a short term volunteer vacation. She loved it and stayed and now runs her own organization that trains teachers in Nepal. The session was okay, but I wanted to hear more about how to do more. She just had us do one activity and the rest of the time we learned about her organization and a few anecdotes. Now I realize it was hard for her to get the group to come to order and to listen to directions so some time was wasted that she might have used differently. So I’d say it was a pretty good session.
The next one I saw was on promoting learner autonomy. This was much better. The speaker has a job in Japan as a Learning Advisor. So for the most part she helps students stay on top of their studies and develop better learning strategies. She described a course she gave on how to become a more autonomous, self-directed learner. Her ideas were sound and practical. More universities in Asia should offer such programs and classes.
On Sunday I planned to go for one or two sessions and lunch, but the day didn’t play out that way. I did pick up my NELTA Certificate, which is a cool souvenir, and chatted with an American who teaches in Japan.
Japan was well represented with about 5 or 6 presenters. As you’d guess, India and Bangladesh had a good proportion. Uzbekistan and sent a few. I was the sole person from Korea. The reason is that Korea is sort of a Lotus Land, which doesn’t encourage much professional involvement from its EFL teachers. I know my colleagues at Sogang actually gossip about the few staff members who would give presentations. They’d whisper that those teachers were just “ambitious.” Is that such a bad thing? For all their good education, intelligence and teaching ability, it’s a puzzle that Korean colleagues under-perform the colleagues I had in Indonesia (who did a lot, but except for one person, just produced rubbish) or China.
smkelly8