Hello guys
Hi everyone!
How are you doing? Do you guys in Mie University remember me? Anyway, I'm doing fine in Nabari.
I suppose most of you in the English department want to be English teachers. If you need any information about teaching, don't hesitate to ask me. I don't know if I can answer all the questions you have, though.
Now, I'm teaching English to high school students. The school I'm working for is not an academic one, but the students are very good and they're fun to be with. However, it is sometimes hard to deal with their problems. And of course I rarely have holidays as I had in university.
I have many questions for you, too. I want to know how I can make an interesting English conversation class and a writing class. I want advice not only from teachers and those who speak English but also from students.
Today, I'm eating out with co-workers. Have a nice weekend!
Hello, Wakako-senpai. How are you? I have not seen you since last year's university festival, but I sometimes hear about you from your younger sister, Yukiko-san.
I never took a conversation class in my high school, so I don't know much about it.
But a writing class I took in high school was not interesting to me because my teacher always focused on the writing textbook which was boring. All we did in that class was that the teacher pointed to students and checked their English composition which they wrote as their homework. Even the teacher said that the textbook was boring.
So I think that if possible, you'd better choose an interesting textbook, and use other teaching materials, not focusing on the textbook so much. But I don't know the first thing about teaching, so my ideas might not be so useful.
Then, may I ask you a question? You say that it is sometimes hard to deal with the students' problem. What is the greatest difficulty in working as a teacher?
Conversation classes are an Amurik'n thing: I've never taken or taught one, so any advice I'd give on teaching them would probably be fairly useless.
However, I try to work the other way round: I try to make my regular classes as conversational as I possibly can. I encourage students to participate and to ask their own questions instead of having answers shoved down their throats to questions they never asked. A greater reliance on the colloquy rather than on the lecture would, I think, also benefit the Japanese high school classroom with its rigid, full-frontal, authoritarian traditions.
How should you teach writing classes? Um, errr – I don't know, really. Just walk into that room and do it? Put emphasis on writing as a craft?
Myself, I've increasingly come to rely on Smalley, Ruetten and Kozyrev's Refining Composition Skills, which is aimed at high-intermediate and advanced ESL/EFL students. This book has an intermediate-level counterpart in Mary K. Ruetten's Developing Composition Skills; I've never seen that one, but if Refining Composition Skills is anything to go by, it should be a good source of materials to cook up classes from.
High schools in Japan are highly regimented in that they are forced to use government-approved textbooks. Is the English composition textbook as bad as Masami-san suggests?
Thanks for your replies.
As for the conversation classes, I agree with everyone. I often choose students' favorite topics. I also use those topics during classes such as composition, grammar and reading. I think it is one of the best ways to attract students.
However, in a composition class, it is really difficult. Many students don't know the structure of English. To make an interesting class, I use example sentences including students' favorite singers, actors, movies and so on, and I usually ignore the examples in the textbook. But the students remember nothing after a class because they just enjoy it and do not learn. However hard I tell them important things, they come to me just before the exam, bringing their textbooks and say "what should we memorize???" They are all used to standarized classes and they think it is important to memorize. But I have to tell you that my students are not good at memorization... Some students don't know when they should use "is", "am" or "are."
In some classes I sometimes teach in English. At first students felt confused, but now most of them listen carefully to what I'm saying. Of course it's hard for them, though.
The greatest difficulty... It's difficult to tell, Masami. Students come to tell their problems, such as love, friendship, etc. Most girls don't know how to keep friendship or relations with others.
If a student does forbidden things like smoking, riding a motorbike, you have to visit his/her parent. It is an uncomfortable situation...
Well, it is impossible to tell all the difficult things. Sorry.
Too much talking, I know.
Hiroko Shioda :: June 8, 2003 12:00 AM
Hello, Wakako-sensei! Do you remember me? Two years have passed since you graduated from Mie University, and I haven't seen you for a long time.
Now you are worried about how to keep your students amused in an English conversation and a writing class. I think it's a good idea in both conversation and writing class to choose a topic which the students are really interested in, for instance their hobbies or favorites.