My main responsibility was to prepare lessons for, teach a variety of Oral English courses, and examine students with class sizes ranging from 25 to 100. Over the two years I’ve been required to teach courses based on books involving General Oral English, Speech Making, Debates and exam preparation (TEM4, TEM8, and IETLS). But by far the most demanding was a lecturing series entitled “An Insight Into Britain” which was proposed, written, and taught entirely myself.

Among other responsibilities were judging two university wide speech contests, participating in weekly “English Corners” a social environment aimed at speaking English freely, and planning final course examinations with Chinese teaching staff. The most enjoyable responsibility was to teach a class of post-graduate International Business Majors whose standard was high, being given the freedom to teach what was needed, and finding the students happy to give me feedback freely.

The experience gained here for me was mainly related to self-confidence in public speaking, and dealing with motivating students who weren’t necessarily very interested in learning English. Though equipment failure and time fluctuations in how long the student took to do activities gave me a good environment to learn about reacting to situations, and showed me the value of my thoroughness and limitations of sticking to planning.

I gained knowledge of Chinese Culture in the working environment of dealing with my bosses and other teaching staff, especially concerning the high degree of flexibility required by the system. In the classroom I learnt some benefits and shortcomings of Chinese education, and various cultural attitudes towards everyday things.