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anonymous
Q: Do you like to teach English?
I've been teaching English in a training center for six months.Now,I realized i have not been enjoying my work but still working just for the sake of money.How many of you have the same view as mine?
11 years 1 week ago in Arts & Entertainment - China
Yes, I enjoy to be 'abducted by UFO' on weekdays. Can't stand it on weekends, thou!
http://answers.echinacities.com/question/teach-kids-or-teach-adults#answ...
I am usually teaching both: adults at prime job, and little ones (1.5 - 5Y) as part time (less than 10 h a week).
I always have fun with kids, because they are very direct. When I am alone with 10 kids, I imagine it would be the same as if I would be abducted by UFO:
- aliens would speak language unknown to me;
- they would poke their fingers into all holes on my face;
- they would all jump on me, sitting in the plastic chair, and watch how (if) I will survive the impact;
- there is an interesting 1.5Y old boy, who doesn't really want to learn or talk English. He is always armed with wooden stick or similar tool in his pocket, and when he's tired of listening English, he comes closer to me, and try to dismantle my tape recorder, and so on.
I always leave class with babies in good mood.
teaching at training centers really suck. spoiled brats who are not willing to study the right way. they are lazy and have no real interest in english.
99Silva:
?? that's probably because you were the teacher at the training center. . . You do know you have to play games with them...and by calling someone a brat I can only assume that you did not treat them well during the class. my 2 cents!
crimochina:
yes play games with uni students studying for the ielts/ toefl. typical chinese think class should be just games , and teach me how to "beat the test"
GuilinRaf:
Crimo is right. Those who disagree either have never taught in China or are happy (resigned?) with being the "dancing foreign monkey."
Actually, students in training centers, if they are under the age of 25 are rather spoiled brats who are t here only because their parents make them go there.
They have no real interest in learning, they just want to be "entertained". And thus, the owners of these centers get angry at the foreign teachers who actually try to TEACH.
University is a bit better, though again, the altitude is that the foreign teacher is not a "real" teacher.
As for me, it took a while but eventually the school realized that i took my job seriously and was not there to play games, show movies or sing or anything like that. However, seeing how things are, I avoid all schools except universites. Anything else, I stay away.
Traveler:
There is no way that raining centres could be classified as education, not by any stretch of the imagination. Most of the students are spoiled brats by western standards, but quite acceptable by Chinese standards. Being Chinese, Silva wouldn't understand the difference.
mArtiAn:
Can't agree with many of the comments here; a classroom is a classroom and the teacher makes of it what he will. In fact the whole 'dancing monkey' thing is something I associate more with the extra-curricula activities designed to promote such schools, where as a teacher you often feel a little like you're being paraded and sometimes cajoled into doing things you might otherwise say no to. But then I look back on some such things, like hosting shows, playing my sax at open days or.....yeh......dressing up as Santa, as some of the most memorable things i've done since I started teaching. It doesn't mean I take teaching any less seriously, i'm extremely conscientious and approach the responsibility of being a teacher with great diligence. Training schools do generally put an emphasis on enjoying your studies, but i'm realistic about that too, and as much as I try, during the practise period of any lesson, after the target language has been introduced and students have been brought to some understanding of it, to create a situation they will find fun or stimulating in which to do that practise, be it a game or otherwise, it often comes down to the simple matter of plain study, and if students complain I bring out the grammar sheets as punishment and remind them that if all they want to do is play they should leave immediately and go buy a football. And to say that such schools do not provide an education is ridiculous, i've seen plenty of students develop and grow in their understanding of English as a result of attending such training schools, and to say that students who do attend such schools are all spoilt is also ridiculous; such schools are expensive by most Chinese family's standards, but being better off financially than most others does not necessarily equate to being spoilt, if it did then you could say that America and much of the western world were also spoilt. I don't see anything wrong whatsoever in using a variety of means to teach, including games and videos, in fact I think variety is very much the key to teaching effectively. But as a bad workman blames his workbench and tools, so a bad teacher blames his students and schools.
crimochina:
i'm not the kind of person that can just go through the motions. if my students are not trying to get anything out of the lesson, i feel like a whore. i have taught many different types of students. if i have to tell you, "maybe you should take notes and write this down", then sth is wrong with you as a student. if i ask you to respond to the topic / question and you do not even try to think of sth, sth is wrong with you. if i ask you a simple question, to help you develop your ideas ("why should he talk to his wife?") and your knee jerk response is "no why" and you go back to playing games on your phone you can't blame me.
mArtiAn:
Well if you're allowing students to play video games in your lesson, I think I see where the problem is.
crimochina:
if your parents paid 1500- 2500 for their adult son to attend the lesson it is not my job to tell him to not play with his phone. typical chinese thinking sb must tell me what to do always.
Hugh.G.Rection:
If a student is doing something wrong in your class it's the student's fault. If the student is still doing it 30 seconds after you notice it, it's your fault.
crimochina:
i'm a teacher not a baby sitter. w/ my uni students i deduct points. but at training centers adults should know better. i will not waste the time of the other students to deal with the babies.
i never played games in my english classes in america all the way to grade 12, do chinese kids play games in their chinese classes through grade 12,
but if games are to generate interest in learning english, then at what point or age is it no longer useful. i have seen games in adult english classes and i was thinking if i was chinese, i would be pissed that im paying to play games instead of learning a language.
when i have taken chinese lessons and then decided it was not worth learning the language, the tutor never asked me if i wanted to play a game now.
It's a little tangential, but I don't think games are necessarily a bad idea, even with adults.
I now teach in Australia and just this afternoon livened up a particularly dull grammar review lesson they really needed to work through (they had previously sucked hard at this particular structure) by turning the main worksheet into a type of grammar lottery with a 30c bar of chocolate as the prize.
Instead of "oh, God, she hates us, she's making us work soooo hard, why do we have to do this, I hate grammar, waaah, waaah" they started getting super competitive and much more engaged. Much better results all round.
The problems only come when games are seen and important in and of themselves, rather than as a means to an end (i.e. learning). I came across this attitude a lot in China - kids get the idea that they only learn by playing games and shouldn't ever have to do anything else, when in fact if a game isn't designed to elicit and repetitively practice a particular structure/sound/vocab set, it's useless.
Um, this is a bit of a ramble but my point is: don't blame games for China's crap standards, blame the underlying attitude issues.
Oh, incidentally, I do like teaching, mostly. I'm a bit over it now though. I want to go back to uni.
I enjoy teaching older students. It's the "little emperors" that I can't stand. You know what I'm talking about: those little four-year-olds that are secretly demon-children.
juestewang:
The creator for those movies probably came to China for a little while and taught children English, and so got his idea for Chucky.
I generally enjoy teaching English at my university myself. But I would say that there is a very big difference between teaching English to 'adults' at universities and colleges on the one hand, and teaching in training centres on the other. Having previously taught in a training centre in Beijing, I understand why very few persons enjoy teaching at Chinese training centres.
As some of the previous posters have already pointed out, 'teaching English' in Chinese training centres usually just means being a white monkey for the "little Emperors". You are also mainly supposed to entertain the students to keep up the profits of the centres involved.
By contrast, I find the environment at universities and colleges in China a lot freer, with you being able to make up your own syllabus and curriculum. So in conclusion, teaching English can be great as long as you stay away from training centres.
As a matter of fact I do. English is my love, it's exciting to observe as it changes & new expressions & vocabulary appear. I love talking to British, American & Canadian colleagues of mine & noticing slight differences between British & American English. I have a thing for hearing English around, I like the way it sounds. When I share my passion for English with students, they get excited & start trying to speak. I'm lucky to be paid for something I take great pleasure in doing. I'm thinking of volunteering in summer. I've taken much from China, it's time to give back.
Yes I do like teaching it, however I am losing the will to live trying to teach it to kindergarten. I would much prefer to be teaching in a high school.
chenhan:
you can apply for teaching positions in high schools and universities after you have got one or two years' experience
If i had to go back to teaching I would be on a flight tomorrow back to my home country. Hate would be the understatement of the year for how I feel about it.
There's some things you just aren't meant to do in life, teaching ended up being one of those things for me. Much respect for anyone else who does a good job and enjoys it, but it's not something for me.
IT'S ok! There are worst jobs than teaching. I don't like teaching at Kindergartens you know those one's with the locked gates. I don't mind kindergartens, but not those kinds. I mean you can't even go back there when you are off. It's horrible!
always irrelevant
Traveler:
Silva's English is so much gooder. It's "worse" not "worst."
I enjoy working but anyway its ok it will get better with time
I think most of them don't like that. But the problem is what else they can do.
If you are liked by the students, then it can be enjoyable. Exercise the freedom that you have being that you are teaching at a training center. Teach well, and earn their respect as a teacher, but have fun too with the students. I found that most students at the training centers want to have relaxed classes, free talk, interesting topics, etc. and presented in a way that is not rigid. Many of the students have very busy days, so I always tried to make their day better in the time that i had with them, while teaching English at the same time. Try to be the highlight of their day, and there are some students that are just shit everytime to you and others, no escaping that.
If It's English Literature to Grad Students, hell yeah.
If it's Oral English to spoiled 19 year olds who pay money to get a diploma, and want to pass a class they never attend, hell no.
-That's the breaks.
I did... when I first got here, I was 'teaching' oral English to gaokao failures at a tight-arse uni.
Then, I moved to a much better uni, but still teaching English to a bunch of gaokao failures whose parents had the money to get them into an international program. I did enjoy teaching IT English (because I can!), but the business English sucked (how to write an effective email... blech!)
This year, I've had wannabe US uni students (partly lazy, partly good!), an 'IELTS preparation' class (a group thrown together to give the company some money) who don't give a stuff, and only turn up to class half the time (and sleep or on the phone the other half.. you know the lot - mummy and daddy have money, and want their kids out of their hair, so want them gone to OS.
And, finally, a group of wannabe master's degree students in the UK... that's been the best class I've ever had to teach, as I can bring a whole heap of my academic studies to the fore.. you know, teach some really useful and specific stuff! That was good (students weren't, necessarily, but you get that!)
However, I'm somewhat over teaching, so I think I'll just stick to examining for a bit.... (pays better too, and I'll have plenty of time off 
!)
