Combining Work With Blogging

I’m meant to be planning a lesson for tomorrow morning right now, but instead I’m sitting here writing blog entries. So I thought I’d kill two birds with one stone, and write a blog entry about my teaching to help me plan my lesson. I’m currently teaching 6 six-year-old kids who live in approximately the same area of Dalian. I teach 3 older children from 9AM to 10AM, and the 3 younger ones between 10AM and 11AM.

The younger ones are much easier to teach, they’re more responsive to an authority figure, and one of the children’s mother stays with us to keep order. The mother, by sitting in on the lesson, has been learning some English. She also acts as provider of sweets as incentives.

The older ones don’t like to concentrate when I’m teaching them new words, and from the little experience I do have, it’s a pre-requisite for playing games based on the new words. The main problem is that unlike the other group the mother hasn’t been sitting in to help control them. She has started to do so from last week. I’m hoping this week will be much better.

My style of teaching has developed into the following standard pattern.

1. Introductions.
2. Go over last weeks vocab.
3. Learn new vocab.
4. Play games about the vocab.
5. Revise the chapter of the book studied in the last lesson.
6. Study the next chapter of the book.

In the introduction I ask them some questions.

• Hello
  • Hello
• My name is Alastair, what is your name?
  • My name is …….
• I’m from England, which country are you from?
  • I’m from China.
• I live in Dalian, which city do you live in?
  • I live in Dalian.
• I’m 25 years old, how old are you?
  • I’m 6 years old.
• How are you?
  • I’m happy/sad/ok/fine.

For the vocab, I either show them the real things or pictures and let them repeat after me. I let them watch my mouth carefully so they can see the movements and I listen to them repeating to make sure their pronunciation is acceptable. I teach around 7 items/words from a lexical set, many more than 7 items is too many, unless they know some of the words already. Note that the Chinese learn the American English words for things.

• Things around the room: Wall, Ceiling, Floor, Door, Stairs, Window, Sofa, Bed, Cupboard, Table, Chair.
• Eating/Drinking Implements: Knife, Fork, Spoon, Plate, Glass, Mug, Bowl, Chopsticks, Dish.
• Fruit and Veg: Potato, Carrot, Leek, Cucumber, Tomato, Orange, Orange Peel/Skin/Segments, Apple.
• Clothes: Hat, Scarf, Gloves, Trousers, Shorts, Jeans, T-Shirt, Shirt, Jumper, Jacket, Coat, Dress, Skirt, Socks, Shoes.
• Office Implements: Paper, Pencil, Pen, Stapler, Staples, Book, Notebook, Crayons.
• Weather: Cloudy, Sunny, Rainy, Stormy, Snowy, Cold, Warm, Hot, Icy.
• Animals: Cat, Dog, Cow, Pig, Sheep, Rabbit, Horse, Monkey
• Buildings: Shop, House, Supermarket, Library, School, Hospital, Cafe (Tea House more relevant to China / Coffee Shop not so much), Restaurant.
• Body Parts: Head, Shoulders, Knees, Toes, Eyes, Ears, Mouth, Nose, Arm, Elbow, Hand, Fingers, Foot/Feet, Legs, Hair, Tummy/Belly/Stomach, Chest, Back, Bottom, Eye Brows.
• Nationalities (flags or stereotypical images of people): English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean.

Then I have some pointing games where I point and we all say the names together, then the next stage is I point and they say what it is, and then I say a thing and they point. The reason for going over last weeks vocab is to assess how well they’ve learnt the vocab, and go over any they’re not remembering, so it can stick into longer term memory.

For the next stage of class, I’m using a Chinese text book called “New Concept English”, Chinese ISBN: 9-787560-013466, Cost: 29.9 Kuai, Author: L. G. Alexander, Publisher: Longman. It’s quite popular in China, not so fun for the children however. I’m doing it because the parents have requested that I teach them some dialogues and some cultural/spoken logic. I’ve not yet discovered how to make this interesting. I use the situations in the book and act them out with the parents of the children so that they can get the meaning, and then vocalise myself, children repeat until they’ve remembered the conversation. Then use different examples as provided by the book.

Related posts:

1. Building A Relationship With A Customer
2. Student Feedback
3. Student Speech Titled "Self Introduction"
4. Student Feedback
5. "Fatuous Efforts to Revise Chinese Characters"