Teaching training in Shanghai
by chris
The Monkey Kings have been in Shanghai getting training from our employer, Web International. It seems like a good school with a solid business model, which could explain its relative success and fast growth. We learned all about how the school works, how to teach better and what is expected of us.
We each taught small classes. The key to teaching these classes is that you, the teacher, limit your presence. That means as little talking as possible. Most teachers want to lecture and some just talk to hear themselves talk. “Flip open those beginner textbooks, turn to the page on compound nouns and knock yourselves out.” But we are teaching conversation. You don’t lecture conversation into someone. So your job is to get them talking to each other, using the language that is the goal of the lesson.
And then you need to strike a balance between accuracy and fluency. Accuracy means getting it right. You can correct people when they make a mistake, but is that really how they learn? There is a part of the class where you should correct them. How do you correct them? You learn by thinking about what you are trying to say. Therefore, if you stop people and tell them, they won’t learn, they’ll just parrot you. Instead, stop them and say the same thing back to them. “We went to shopping.” “We went to shopping?” “Um, we went shopping!” But don’t worry too much about errors, because fluency is more important in language learning–speaking fast rather than speaking properly. As long as you can make yourself understood, you are communicating. So most of the class you want to focus on letting them speak to each other, asking each other questions and even correcting each other if they think about it.
Little talking from the teacher means maximum from the students. Making them think about their mistakes makes them remember them. And giving them the goals of the class and then sitting back helps their fluency. Sounds easy, right? We’ll see how well we do.
Tags: English teaching, Shanghai
June 16th, 2008 at 7:18 am
Hey there. Chris, I wrote you on Facebook to add me to your blog roll, you still haven’t.
Anyway I totally understand what you said in this post, and I can only hope that teachers in Macedonia will have a similar training as well so that we can all feel the benefits in the future. And I’m not only talking about language teacher, but for all of them (with few exceptions).
I recently had a lecture where the facilitator was doing so much talking that in the end even he didn’t what he had just said.
Hope to read more soon.
Bye