By continuing you agree to eChinacities's Privacy Policy .
Sign up with Google
Sign up with Facebook
Q: What useful teaching techniques have you developed?
Teaching kids i've found flashcards to be invaluable; just loads of games you can play with them. I make my own - must have about three or four hundred. Probably the most valuable thing i've found though is a classroom management method that keeps them in line and focuses their attention. Just started it recently. Each kid has a folder and each page of it has a title, be it 'people' or 'animals' or 'food' or whatever, and throughout the class students get awarded points that turn into stickers at the end of the lesson. Those stickers can fit into one or other category of the folder (kids love such collections) and once they've filled a page with 100 stickers they get a prize. Just keeps them focused as hell and really enthused.
I did have a technique once that I came up with when I was teaching adult students, to aid them in remembering the gender pronouns 'he/she/him/her/his/hers', as this is always a problem in China. The idea was a simple drawing of a large penis, or a pair of plump breasts, then when a student made a gender error of this kind I could simply hold up the relevant picture, raise my eyebrows and give an "Uh-uh-uh-uhh" and elicit the correct gender pronoun. But something always told me...no. And i've learnt to go with that instinct.
So what classroom techniques have you developed that you would like to pass on?
11 years 10 weeks ago in Teaching & Learning - China
Flashcards I found to be great when I first started but I don't use them as often now. I mix up the class with PowerPoint images and crazy ways to highlight the word. That is, either the way the letters of the word come onto the screen or a particularly funny image. I also embed short movie clips into various places, these can be cartoons or just a short clip from an ESL lesson which you can find on YouTube. This style is mainly for the younger ones as it tends to hold their attention better. Games form part of these lessons as well. Sometimes I revert to the tried and true flashcards, depends on the lesson material.
For older students' classes, to add a bit of a change to past practices, I purchased magnetic sheets from Taobao, cut them into 4 pieces on which I wrote a letter of the alphabet. The number of word and spelling games that can be played with these letters are many. Teams to spell the vocab words we are learning, use of a stopwatch to time how long it takes to form the word on the board, tic-tac-toe games, concentration, the list is endless really. The investment was about 120RMB and the magnetic pieces last forever.
I have also modified certain games for vocab, spelling and sentence construction.
While here in the Philippines I came across a Magic Shop and spent a good hour in there selecting some simple magic tricks to perform this coming term. Kids love that stuff so I hope my sleight of hand improves. 
I think lessons can be as creative and as interesting as your imagination. No limits!
China's teaching methods are so antiquated that I actually had to try to recall all the things I had read about Grammar Translation Method (GTM), when we studied methods that have been outdated in the west, to achieve the requirements of China's mis-education system.
There is a reading that is being used in many Australian universities now to help prepare teachers who are planning on teaching in China.
Hu Guangwei (2005) "Basic English Language Education In China: An Overview"
It was prepared by a lecturer at Singapore's famous Nanyang University. Instructional Practices (GTM, etc) begin at page 16.
It is also used as an example of outdated teaching practices (especially GTM).
1 best song to teach is Soft Kitty (please forgive me)
2 be animated when explaining something (like charades not Mr Bean) 
if you are not having fun
the student is not enjoying the lesson and will be asleep in the first ten minutes or playing games on their phone 
