What Chinese teachers are saying about you

Work Teaching English in Taiwan
21

My (limited) experience of Taiwanese English teachers is that they are unable to deliver very motivating or thought-provoking lessons. They seem to favour the ‘watch me while I talk at you, drill you and write grammar rules on the board’ method. The teaching methodology over here is a complete contrast to the kind of thing I was taught during a TESOL course in the UK. Most Taiwanese teachers would have failed that course for failing to stimulate the students.

Sorry, am having a kind of ant-Taiwan day !

22

[quote=“BritishVick”]My (limited) experience of Taiwanese English teachers is that they are unable to deliver very motivating or thought-provoking lessons. They seem to favour the ‘watch me while I talk at you, drill you and write grammar rules on the board’ method. The teaching methodology over here is a complete contrast to the kind of thing I was taught during a TESOL course in the UK. Most Taiwanese teachers would have failed that course for failing to stimulate the students.

Sorry, am having a kind of ant-Taiwan day ![/quote]

Their job is to teach, drill, and explain. Your job is to stimulate and entertain.

Foreign teacher is there to get the kids hyped up and laugh and play games. Then the Taiwanese teacher steps in to go over the grammar. Unless you can speak enough fluent Mandarin to explain English grammar to Chinese students, that’s the job the Taiwanese teachers do better than you.

23

Every local teacher that works with me is a great asset and, quite frankly, without them our buxiban wouldn’t be anything much at all. Much respect to the wonderful teaching staff, local and foreign, that work with us.

24

My experience re: local teachers has been mostly positive. I find that by holding up my end in the classroom and buying the odd bubble tea (someone else mentioned this also), local teachers appreciate me more. I am deeply indebted to a few individuals as well. When I first arrived here, I was totally lost and couldn’t speak a word of Mandarin (this is a huge problem in a place like Taoyuan). Some of my coteachers got together and gave me free tutorials in Mandarin (they wouldn’t take my money, although I insisted on buying the coffee, lunch etc). Honestly, I have found my local teachers to be really great friends (and if I were single, potential romances as well).

I understand why they might complain about SOME of us, though. While the majority of us are responsible teachers, you quite often get the party animal transient type who phones in sick at the last minute often and breaks contract on short notice. Irresponsible people bother all of us.

25

My experience re: local teachers has been mostly positive. I find that by holding up my end in the classroom and buying the odd bubble tea (someone else mentioned this also), local teachers appreciate me more. I am deeply indebted to a few individuals as well. When I first arrived here, I was totally lost and couldn’t speak a word of Mandarin (this is a huge problem in a place like Taoyuan). Some of my coteachers got together and gave me free tutorials in Mandarin (they wouldn’t take my money, although I insisted on buying the coffee, lunch etc). Honestly, I have found my local teachers to be really great friends (and if I were single, potential romances as well).

I understand why they might complain about SOME of us, though. While the majority of us are responsible teachers, you quite often get the party animal transient type who phones in sick at the last minute often and breaks contract on short notice. Irresponsible people bother all of us.

26

[quote=“mod lang”]

Their job is to teach, drill, and explain. Your job is to stimulate and entertain.

Foreign teacher is there to get the kids hyped up and laugh and play games. Then the Taiwanese teacher steps in to go over the grammar. Unless you can speak enough fluent Mandarin to explain English grammar to Chinese students, that’s the job the Taiwanese teachers do better than you.[/quote]

I don’t know about that. I only teach adults (apart from a couple of Junior High lessons) and they praise my lessons for being interesting. My class sizes seem to keep increasing so I take that as a good sign. My Taiwanese friend who teaches at a university is always being criticised for creating such dry lessons and her students beg her to find them authentic materials. How can you teach grammar if your students are half asleep ?

27

Oh. Well, that’s different. Totally different from teaching kids. Adults are easy, because you don’t have so much pressure balancing the dancing clown and teacher act - you just have to teach.

Teaching high schools and junior high schools are the toughest. 50 kids a class and they expect you to teach “conversation” :loco:

28

Been there, done that. My high school classes now comprise 16-22 kids and are not tough at all. We DO have conversations. Don’t know what the chinese staff have to say about it that though. I have to include lots of filling-in-the-blanks too, to make it look like real teaching when they peer through the windows, but we have time for questions (from the students!) and games as well as actual chat.

Vick, nice to see you back, btw.

29

Been there, done that. My high school classes now comprise 16-22 kids and are not tough at all. We DO have conversations. Don’t know what the Chinese staff have to say about it that though. I have to include lots of filling-in-the-blanks too, to make it look like real teaching when they peer through the windows, but we have time for questions (from the students!) and games as well as actual chat.

Vick, nice to see you back, btw.[/quote]

Yes, been there too. Hated it. I got them to cut the class size in half though, but then the school board wanted to cut the hourly pay, so, I walked. Would have been a solid gig if I had made it last though, only teacher in town, at the time, with solid mandarin skills.

30

I am living the nightmare right now!!!

26 fear~inducing, hair~pulling hours a week.
I have tried on a few occasions to explain the head of the English department that teaching anything efficiently to an English conversation class with 55 pubescent teenagers is a pipe dream. She agreed.
She told me to start using the rod! :noway: She figured that would at least keep em quiet\afraid.

However, I do have a nightly two hour class for the students who actually want to learn something

31

Been there, done that. My high school classes now comprise 16-22 kids and are not tough at all. We DO have conversations. Don’t know what the Chinese staff have to say about it that though. I have to include lots of filling-in-the-blanks too, to make it look like real teaching when they peer through the windows, but we have time for questions (from the students!) and games as well as actual chat.

Vick, nice to see you back, btw.[/quote]

I teach Jnr High school, my classes are around 40 students. As I only teach High School I have about 30 classes a week. My Taiwanese teachers all love my classes (they all keep asking if they can join my class) and so do my students.

I don’t play games, I have activities. I’ve learnt to accept that not all my students are going to be interested i knowing what I have to say. I use simple, clear instructions and never use too much detail. I do a lot of pair and group work.

For vocab learning I have used activities such as bringing groceries so the students can see what i’m talking about, then let them look and smell the products (they were very interested in mustard, apparently in Chinese wasabi and mustard are the same word). I used to write all my own lessons, but it takes so much time, I now teach them Side-by-Side and I use the teachers manual (thats what they are there for) and change the activities suggest to suit me and my students.

Vick - the reason the Chinese teachers lesson are uninspiring is that the only way teachers know how to teach IS by rote learning. They aren’t taught the principles of critical thinking and how to teach “leaps of logic”. It takes so much hard work for me to teach group work, and how it’s not about getting the right answer but getting to the answer.

Whenever I am unable to teach my class and the Chinese teacher teaches it they see the lesson from a completely different perspective, they want to teach all the grammar rules, whereas I don’t, it’s a conversation class. I teach how to correctly pronounce the words, getting them use to correct sentence patterns, and most importantly I get them to speak. I also teach my students the skills of how to understand a story or essay, whereas the Chinese teachers will look at from the perspective that they have to teach each story to the students. What happens when the teachers not there? How do the understand anything then?

32

:notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: