Will Schools have already Prepared Lessons for You?

Be Prepared for TEFL Freedom

One of the most commonly asked questions I get when I am placing people in schools in China is this: Will the school have already prepared lessons and lesson plans for me?

Well, after I stop chuckling . . . my usual answer is, “No.”

But really the answer depends on where you are going to teach. In China with only a BA/BS and a TEFL certification and a bit of experience you can land a university teaching position. With only a TEFL Certification and a degree and no experience language school positions are available.

Here is my real life response to someone who is taking a position at a university (more about language schools next time) who asked specifically:

I was wondering if I should bring teaching materials with me, and how much flexibility will I have to use my own materials?

My response:

I’ve taught in four countries and frankly ALWAYS preferred my own materials to the often irrelevant and unfocused materials that were usually offered (if any were offered at all!). Some schools do have some decent materials, but most don’t.

How much flexibility? Probably a LOT and hope for a LOT. Usually schools that have a well-defined and pre-designed program are rigidly holding on to what are often terrible materials and a curriculum that doesn’t work well for their students.

Colleges and universities, especially the ones with small EFL programs, usually just expect that you know what to do and give you the freedom to do it. I have rarely encountered even a decent syllabus after working at eight different colleges and universities in those four countries. Very large English departments though are more likely to be better structured and organized.

I don’t mean for my comments about these schools to be negative – it is in fact very positive – as the freedom tends to allow you to build exactly what is needed for your students. Nothing is worse than being forced to teach a very structured program that doesn’t help your students at all.

Now, sometimes a school will give you a book, the book somebody used last year. Sometimes you will be expected to use it as the campus bookstore ordered it and sold it to all the students already.

Understandably, the students would be upset if they were required to purchase a book that was never used, so you use it a bit and add in your own materials and gradually fade out of the book. You will need to use their book a bit, so the students don’t complain – practical considerations! Next semester you get to pick the book.

How the world really works

I had a teacher contact me once, looking for a job because he was about to quit the job he had just taken. His comments were: The school is very unprofessional – they had nothing prepared and told me to just develop my own program.

What?

Yeah, in my mind the PERFECT teaching position! And he was going to quit!

Be happy for the freedom you will have in a position that offers it.

Certainly in most Asian countries and especially at smaller schools you will be offered a lot of freedom and the school will expect you to know what to do. Especially as they are often paying you more and sometimes much more than the non-native speaker local teachers.

TED’s Tips™ #1: Just another reason to get some training before you take up a teaching position as many schools will expect you to put together the program you are going to teach.   Especially at the university/college level you can expect that the school will assume that you know what to do and will ask you to get on with it. 

Teaching Internships in China

The BEST EFL Teaching Jobs in China: Government Colleges, Universities and Secondary Schools offer the most reliable and worry-free jobs in China. Click on the Link if you would like to Teach English in China

The Usefulness of Choral Response and Repetition in the EFL Classroom

Okay, this sounds instantly boring, but it is an important issue in the EFL classroom, or any language classroom for that matter.

A untrained newbie teacher questioned in an email:

Isn’t “listen and repeat” over and over again demeaning? It is like we are treating our students like robots, not like real people.

NO! It is not!

To some extent I can understand the reluctance to do mechanical drill in the classroom. BUT anyone one of you (and me too) who have seriously studied a foreign language before KNOWS how important it is. You will especially understand if you have lived abroad and tried to learn the local language. And the more the language is different from yours the more choral response (the classroom listens to you or a recording and repeats what they hear) and repetition help.

Here’s what happens, and to illustrate I am telling you what happens to ME when I study a language, this is not just theory. This is real language learning. Often the first time someone says something it sounds like pure gibberish to me. The second time, I get a little bit of it. The third time I start to get most of it, the fourth time I might have the whole thing – might understand it and the fifth time, I might get a bit of the stress and rhythm of it.

That is SIX repetitions. Yet, I often need every single one of them to help me learn to repeat back a sentence correctly. And even then, should I stop repeating it because I finally got it right? Or should I repeat if a few more times to check it against the teacher’s model to be SURE I have it right and to build a patten of success?

Rethink this idea of repetition and choral response NOT being useful.  I know some people have a resistance to old styles of teaching where students repeat the mindless babble of an instructor, but language learning is a different animal.

TED’s Tips™ #1: Help your students be successful by using “listen and repeat” drills.  It is a critical part of language learning.  Choral response lets us make our mistakes in group where no one will hear it!  And there are lots of other mistakes going on too.

The BEST EFL Teaching Jobs in China: Government Colleges, Universities and Secondary Schools offer the most reliable and worry-free jobs in China. Click on the Link if you would like to Teach English in China