| 12 March 2003 | 2003 3 12
|
| 12 March 2003 | 2003312
|
China was great, until I had to start working. I had my job interview on a Friday afternoon, with the semester starting the following Monday. That was my first contact with the Foreign Languages Department, since up until then I had only been communicating with the college's Foreign Affairs Office. In fact, I'm not sure that the Foreign Languages Department had even seen my resume before the interview.
I thought facing a three-person selection panel for my last job was intimidating, but in this case I had to stand at the front of a classroom with at least a dozen teachers before me. I was supposed to give a short teaching demo after the interview, but the interposition of the Foreign Affairs Office between employer and employee added a twist to this: my understanding was that I would be provided with a book to use, while the Foreign Languages Department expected me to bring materials of my own. A textbook was hastily located for me.
But first, I was directed to monologue: I criticised the weather (oops), praised the mountain that I happened to see out the window (slick!), and gave a rambling introduction of myself and my teaching philosophy. After that, I responded to some questions that came almost exclusively from the highest-ranking teacher. Then without consulting any of the other teachers, he excused me from doing the teaching demo and said that I had got the job.
* * *
I was scheduled to teach 12 forty-five minute lessons, with no classes on Tuesday or Thursday. I was very pleased with this, but it was too good to last, and on Monday another 4 lessons were added to my empty days. That's the maximum I'm contracted to teach, and I've politely declined the offer of teaching extra classes at an hourly rate.
Almost all my classes are Oral English. I think this is the norm in Chinese universities, since many of the foreign teachers are untrained and thus not qualified to teach the finer points of grammar. However, it took me two weeks to actually figure out what I was supposed to be teaching. The coursebook contains exercises to practise speaking and listening, but at first I had trouble getting hold of tapes and a tape recorder to do the listening activities. Other teachers gently hinted that "the students' listening skills are pretty good," but it was only by talking to the students that I discovered they have a separate class in the listening lab every week dedicated to listening. So half of my textbook is redundant.
The coursebook for my first year Oral English classes is even less suitable. It's a companion to a video, containing the script plus a few activities that focus mainly on comprehension, sometimes on vocabulary or grammar, but never on speaking. Judging by how much of the book the class had finished in a semester, I calculated that they must have covered almost one act every lesson. I based my early lessons around listening comprehension, which almost put the students to sleep, and again it was only by talking to them that I discovered that they too had a separate class in the listening lab. They were so far through the book because the previous teacher had only been showing the most "useful" scenes from the video.
When I did my CELTA course, the trainer said "Even a bad textbook is better than no textbook." But what about an irrelevant textbook? Actually, there is one advantage in using this book: the class is held in the video room, which is a large room with movable chairs. All sorts of activities and seating arrangements are possible in this room, which aren't possible in the cramped environs of a regular classroom where the teacher can barely even walk down the aisle.
I've taught Oral English lessons ranging from bad to mediocre, but I think I'll get the hang of it eventually. There's a lot of opportunity to reuse my lesson plans during each week, and for a speaking class there aren't any written assignments to mark!
In fact, so far the biggest burden has not been the language classes but a course I'm teaching called "A General Survey of English-speaking Countries". The textbook is an introduction to British and American history, politics, and economics. In other words, a lot of dry facts that most native English speakers don't even know (not this one, anyway) and yet still not enough to fill 90 minutes (two periods) of lecturing each week. I would like to teach them something about culture and society, which I consider more interesting and more relevant, but resources written in English are scarse and the internet is no substitute. It takes me a whole weekend to pull together enough material to fill 45 minutes. Then I find some cheap way to pad out the other 45 minute period.
I'm quite willing to integrate films or other media into the lesson, but although DVDs are cheap it's hard to find here anything apart from Hollywood blockbusters, which usually aren't appropriate. After all, what do car chases and zombies reveal about American culture? (Okay, possibly a great deal, but let's start with the basics). I almost showed American Beauty, but I noticed the American "R" rating at the last minute and that scared me off. On the morning before class, I rushed out and rented Bend It Like Beckham, which I prefaced with a brief introduction to multiculturalism in Britain.
The textbook is not only dry, but also written in sophisticated English (by a Chinese author). Of course this facilitates my teaching the course, but I don't think it's a good idea. It's akin to a course on music history being presented as a series of arias! In third year, the students do a unit on linguistics, also with an English textbook.
I think learning about a foreign culture can be a fascinating experience—I wouldn't be here in China, otherwise! So I'd like to do the course justice, but first I need to learn about each topic myself. Although I've been learning English since the day I was born, somehow I have failed to develop an encylopaedic knowledge of Western culture and history. And although this course is a great opportunity to make amends for that, at 1am in the morning before class just finishing my Powerpoint slides tends to be my highest priority.
Most people have opinions about teaching; among those few who I judge to be worth listening to, the unanimous view is that becoming a good teacher requires years of experience. But I just want to know, how many years before you can get a full night's sleep?