Teaching English in Taiwan

I have been Teaching for a little while now so I have a few comments I can make.

First of all, every class is different, not just the age level, or the level of book they are in, but also just the class dynamic. Most classes energy focus around 1 or 2 students and depending on how those poplular/class clown/stand out kids act, the rest will follow. Some classes are slow and you will feel they are brain dead, other classes are high energy, sometimes good, sometimes bad. As a teacher you need to learn to adjust to their style, which is really hard.

For example I have one class where I can drill vocabulary in games, the students listen, and they enjoy the games, they make an effort to talk to each other in English when they know the words they want to say. I have another class at the same level who are pretty bad. They are too aggressive when playing games, and mean spirited, sore losers to boot. They also constantly speak Chinese, including foul language in Taiwanese and Chinese. Nothing much I can do about that, because this is a buxiban, a cram school. I can't send them to the principle, I can't kick them out, or really punish them in any way so the only way I can motivate them to listen is with rewards. Some people will tell you that this is a good system, but really, sometimes punishment is called for I believe.

The actual material is not too hard to teach, the books are good in general, although some days you don't have too much to work with. The tests are easy so any student who has been paying attention should pass. It's rare for a student to fail because the school wants to keep pushing the kids along to the next level. I think thats how my bad class got so high, just got passed along.

Most lessons go like this: First we have a spelling test, maybe 6 - 12 words. THis takes about 10 - 20 mins depending on the class. Next I have the kids open their books and we go over the written material, the different books can vary greatly on how much material is presented. After this, with younger groups we use flash cards to drill vocab, older kids we need to read or play a game that allows them to write, or speak, or in some way identify new sentence structures or vocabulary. Younger groups also need to work in a phonics book and a printing book as well.

It's much easier to make games out of flash cards than it is to do something with writing or speaking, but those are also more valuable sometimes. I can talk more about games in a future post. So generally the teaching is going well and I am enjoying it. The week goes by quickly and I fell happy after teaching my good classes, and after the bad ones, just relieved, haha!