Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Jinsuo Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Suqian Shi? Check out ITTT’s online and in-class courses, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English ONLINE or abroad! ITTT offers a wide variety of Online TEFL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language.
English is very different from Chinese language, it even has another alphabet. So, first of all, if we teach in a university in China we have to make our students become familiar with the English alphabet and give them clear instructions on how to write in an accurate way. They need to practise a lot before knowing well how to write properly, therefore we ought to give them some writings to do by themselves and then correct all of their errors. Secondly, we should also teach them the international phonemic alphabet so they can know what is the correct pronunciation of any word in the dictionary. As for grammar, the Chinese one has not past, present and future tenses so we should spend a lot of time in explaining our pupils how these tenses are formed, how they are used and what are the affermative, negative and question forms. Furthermore, in Chinese grammar verbs have no distinction between persons, while in the English present tenses we have to add an “s” in the third person singular and the persons of the verb “to be” are different from each other. Pupils also need to learn to put an “s” at the end of plural nouns because in Chinese language singular and plural nouns have the same form, therefore we have to get our students used to these grammar rules by letting them do a lot of exercises and expose them to as much English language as possible. The most important thing before they do such activities is to demonstrate on the board what they are expected to do and then elicit a correct answer in order for them to gain a full understanding of both the purpose and procedure of an activity. Only after we went through this step, we can give out the material to them. We should encourage them to speak a lot in class, for example by giving them communicative tasks while using plenty of pair and group work first and after that make them speak in front of the class individually. We can use a tape recorder when they speak, so that after the activity we can listen to the recording and point out the errors they made. We should do our best to reduce their anxiety and stress and also encourage them to discover language for themselves for improving their English language learning. Before correcting them, we can provide them with the opportunity to reflect upon what they have said and to try again because self correction can be very useful. Obviously if they are unable to self-correct we have to help them and avoid pausing the class for too long. Chinese universities have a strict attitude towards student behaviour, students generally respect the teacher and if they are studying in a university we can assume that the large majority of them is highly motivated and willing to listen to us, therefore maintaining discipline would not be a big issue. By the way, if this happens we must remember not to lose our temper.
