ESL Lesson Plan

Dear Carol,

Perhaps you have never talked to a real professional teacher, but if one wants to be a real teacher, he/she needs to get trained, and then be supervised by professional teachers. Nothing else is going to help. All TESL trained teachers are misled and totally misunderstand that when they are teaching, they need to posttest students to see if they have learned. No one is doing that in China correctly. You may have been in China for seven years, but I have been here for fourteen years, and if you came to my language school, I am sure you would discover that you did a lot of things incorrectly. Review is paramount, and without it, how could you, or anyone, possibly know whether or not the students were learning. Why do you think real teachers gave you tests when you were in school. The mess in China is created by Chinese teachers incorrectly teaching the wrong grammar, reading, and writing to students who can't speak the language, coupled with the fact that TESL trained people aren't taught to correctly teach the Chinese. It creates multiple problems for me to teach the Chinese correctly--and all of this is troubled by the fact that the Chinese don't practice, and don't know how. I am sorry if I have stepped on your feelings, or whatever, but after being here for so long, hearing ideas and platitudes aplenty, I believ it is important that someone start telling the truth about the real problems for the people of China. The wrong people are teaching and the wrong curriculum (or the lack of it) is all of China. Get professional, please.

Hi Bob,

Thank you for your comments. I think you raised some valuable points about the teaching conditions in China and how many programs do not cater to the needs of the teachers and students there. That is actually one of the topics that I'm looking at while I'm doing my Masters in TESOL at the moment.

While the ideal situation is that all ESL teachers would have to be professionally trained to teach students, we all know that that is not the case (especially in China). It would also be nice if teacher training were inexpensive, well-established, and easily accessible. However, in places like China, that is also not the case.

That is why I wrote this entry about reflection. It is commonly known in the professional teaching world that teachers can learn a lot about teaching from themselves (please note that I do not mean to imply that they can learn EVERYTHING about teaching in this way). That is why many teachers record their classes, for example. Ideally, you are right, this would be coupled with training in the professional sense. However, if that training is not available, the very least you can do is try to make observations about teaching in your own classroom, so that you can make hypotheses about what went right, what went wrong, and try to figure out what you can do to make it better. You may find out when you're doing your training that you did some things "incorrectly", but you may also find that you've figured a few things out along the line. If the choice is no training, but self-reflection, or no training at all, what would you choose?

If you're interested in reading up on this topic, you could also learn about "Action Research," which takes self-reflection a step further, adding action to your reflections.

I agree with you- teachers should be trained first and then supervised by professional teachers- yes, yes, yes! However, I disagree with your statement that "nothing else will help." I happen to think that there are many things that can help, reflection, reading about SLA (Second Language Acquistion), observing other trained teachers, observing other untrained teachers even (to see what they aren't doing correctly), discussing your classes with other teachers, trying out new methodologies, learning about the students' expectations in a classroom, etc.

I'd be interested in hearing more about your strategies in teaching Chinese students. I'd be especially intersted in how you do or would deal with a mismatch in teacher and student beliefs. I think it could benefit many teachers in China- and their students as well.

Carol
Writer, ESL Lesson Plan

Carol,

Well, I for one think you ARE a professional teacher and KUDOS to you and everyone else who has the initiative, drive, and earnestness to actually "engage" the academic community, through current academic thought and research in teaching methodology. By bettering yourself, what are you are doing is certainly NOT the easy way out. Teacher-training is on-going process that never ends and if you had to work in an institution that provided no teacher evaluation/observation/feedback/continuing ed., how is that your fault? It isn't. To presume that one can take one "good" course with a lot of feedback and then never need any more as long as you live is preposterous. Anyone who thinks that they already know it all doesn't belong in the field of education.

I'd like to say that this response is not directed to anyone particular from your blog's commenters (because maybe I've misread the intent from the tone) but rather to a long line of criticism that has been coming out lately on this and other forums towards those who HAVE higher education credentials (from those who do not or are so far removed from anything remotely contemporary/constructive that they may as well be)

At the expense of going slightly off-topic, some out there, it seems from some ESL forum participants, for example, and others, appear to be sore or just plain recalcitrant about the fact that they never took the time to do the things you and other young scholars are doing: getting informed about the academic discourse before contributing or even negotiating with it. Others have just become disillusioned by their own disatisfying experiences with higher ed.

Their core argument, it seems, is wrapped around the assumption that exerience alone outweighs an awarded/conferred piece of paper each and every time. While this may naturally be debatale, I don't think that the preference for experience without proof of credentials will be the dominating hiring trend for the near future. The best solution, IMHO, is to have both. But, what about those who can't/won't?

Granted, there are some "natural" teachers which exist out there, God love them, and some of them have even managed--somehow--to get by without a degree of any kind. Good for them, I say. They should consider themselves fortunate. However, paranoid, conspiratorial attitudes about the dreaded "establishment," or institutional matrix do not help their case. I am part of the establishment and, as such, I feel empowered to criticize it all I want. Outright rejection, however, is something completely different.

Likewise, most of us involved with any aspect of education realize that there are some really rotten, carefree, irresponsible, uninformed and even unethical "educated and degreed" teachers too (shame on the institutions who passed them through the system or the schools that continue hire these types without accountability). It is my belief though that the Academic Institution-by and large-does NOT have this as its goal (to produce lemons). To further itself? Maybe. Maybe I'm naive but I prefer to call it optimistic that this generation of scholars will begin to take responsibility for the errors of some of those that preceded us.

By the way, non-degreed/non-certified teachers should understand that ALL degreed/certified teachers do not necessarily share exactly the same methodologies. Sometimes I think that there are as many approaches out there as there stars in the sky. Some teachers are unconventional and some are outright robots blindly following any trend.

The thing is that sweeping generalizations directed at ALL ESL teachers is not only unfair, it's certifiably ignorant. I find it hypocritical (if not ironic) that there are actually persons (with absolutely no way to produce a peer-reviewed credential of some sort) out there willing to take hard-earned money from other working-class families to teach their children English as a foreign/second language and, in many cases I am supposing, ultimately prepare them for the well-known standardized tests, etc. that they will need to take in order to get into higher-ed. programs that have a foreign language requirement or even overseas college/universitys, an institution of which that they themselves do not "believe" in apparently as legitimate. If such teachers' goals are NOT to encourage Academia, then what on earth are they? So that working-class people can cave in to the economic demands of speaking English in their day-to-day jobs? To get a job working for some other "university-educated" maganger/proprietor that has a "must speak English" job requirement? Seems to me that the bigger issues are the economic/cultural globalist tendencies going on in the industry (the one that will drive some schools to hire uneducated teachers to do their bidding) rather than theories that put ALL of the world's problems on institutions of higher learning (and their degreed products). We are talking about ESL education here and not education in general (which from my experience living and teaching abroad, rarely matched up in theoretical agreement with conventional Western models). Who is to say what is right and what is wrong anyway in this postmodern world of ours?

NOTE: See Dr. Hall's comments on "conflicting" teaching theories HERE:

http://www.esl-school.com/archives/2006/10/language_learning_theories.php

So, that's my little rant for whatever it's worth. The moral: don't hate the mailman for delivering the mail. The writing is on the wall people. As the ESL consumer gets more sophisticated, he/she will begin to demand that the ESL ed. representatives they pay to give them something in return are also. For those who managed to get into the system early without a degree and already have an established clientele of private students, good for them. This blog doesn't seem to be devoted to such an audience as that but rather to those who make their livings working for institutions that require certifications for the mostpart: hence the reason for the vast amount of energy expended to discuss it. I'm sure there are other "alternative" blogs out there that might carefully represent the concerns of the "under-represented" portion of the industry.

Keep up the good work Carol! You're doing a fine, "professional" job!

Lee
http://www.english-blog.com

I dont know how to write a reflection after the class. I am a student and will be a teacher next year. help me please!

Teacher Development.
The British Council have been running a course in teacher training, SETIP,( Shanghai English Teaching Improvement Project) for five years and ends this year.
I am currently teaching for Holmeslglen, an Australian based IELTS programme in Wuhan. We have a team of seven foreign teachers and ten young Chinese teachers. Every week we have a staff meeting, discussing students and afterwards a pedagaogical session, where we compare teaching styles and different ways to teach English. I find it very rewarding to act as co ordinator for this programme and after four years I have developed a training scheme that weekly covers advice on teaching with resouces,class planning,teaching grammar (choral drills, chain drills etc), writing (dictation games etc), reading (skim,scan), speaking (including phonetics), listening (use of tapes), class management (pacing etc), vocabulary, assessment techniques, professional areas (legal responsibilities), discipline etc.
I am now very interested in making more Chinese teachers aware of the nuts and bolts of teaching English as a training process, for themselves - and for the students! Does anyone know of any way I can get started or any courses I should attend myself. I have two degrees, one in English, and two teacher training certificates.
One of the major difficulties for Chinese teachers is that they have been brought up to accept the AUTHORITY of the school teacher as a focal point of teaching (the sheer physical presence of the teachers desk raised on a platform, for example) and they find it diffcult to break this distance to the students (which is necessary as English is a communicative tool) for fear of 'losing control' (and losing face). Similarly, foreign teachers are viewed as 'crazy' by students (and Chinese teachers!)sometimes for their variety of activities which are in stark contrast to the textbook and blackboard routine that students have traditionally been brought up with since kindergaarten.
I have built up my resources for training teachers based on David Riddell, "Teaching English as a Foreign Language,", "teach international" (sic), Holmesglen material and also my own experience about the need for constant training and revision of students. As a Chinese proverb says,"One never feeds a student. One teaches him how to catch fish". Too many teachers approach English as blackboard knowledge and forget English is a living written and spoken communicative experience. They would deny this statement but many times I walk into a classroom and find the teacher talking 95% of the time in front of the blackboard.
Our department is preparing students for Australia so we need to be responsible about teaching well. But I care so much about these students and especially the CET teachers that I I would like to improve the quality of teaching in China. If anyone has similar ideas or advice, please let me know. I would really appreciate it.

Hi David
Lost your email address-can you get in touch with me
Friend from Cambridge