Class

I'm nearing the end of my first full week of class. I teach seven classes of students majoring in teaching English and two classes of students majoring in business or business English. Since all my classes are so similar (about the same number of students, all of whom have the same major), I basically end up teaching the same class nine times each week before I move on to the next lesson. So it already is and will continue to be repetitive, but it allows me to review what was good and what was bad about a particular lesson and then tweak it and try it out on the next class. I do realize, though, that this pattern could mean that the first class will end up receiving my worst lessons every time. Although my first two classes last Friday probably were my worst, I think things should continue to get better for my students as the semester goes on and as I learn more about teaching.

I suppose it's apparent that I still don't feel entirely confident with my teaching, and I don't. But I'm trying to learn, mostly from other teachers and from stuff I read on the internet. But my basic goal right now is to get all the students to speak as much English in class as possible. One thing I've done to try and get them to speak more English is to make a rule that prohibits Chinese during class. If someone breaks the rule then everyone has to stand up and sing a song. The song goes to the tune of "The Wheels on the Bus" but the words are "In class we speak only English, only English...that's how we improve". I'm not sure yet if this will prove to be an effective deterrent but that's what I've got for now. Other than the rule, I've heard that competition works the best as a motivator so I'm going to try and keep that in mind. I also bring candy to class for those who win a game or do well at something and it seems to work.

But I really like my students. Almost all of them are very energetic and very friendly. The guys in my classes are generally less active but most of my classes are almost all girls so the classroom environment has been good overall. Surprisingly, though, the most outgoing English students I've met have been guys. Most of them are majoring in solar energy studies. There's a major solar panel parts manufacturer called LDK not far from the college and lots of students go on to work there. These guys who are majoring in solar energy studies aren't enrolled in my classes but they sit in on my classes to practice their English. They've sought me out after class and I've eaten lunch with them on a few occasions. A lot of them play basketball and have invited me to play with them so I'll probably be seeing them a lot more this year.

Last thing for now is that quite a few of my students have some very unexpected English names. Here are a few of them: Paper, Angle, Fantasy, Linkle and Sinkle, Boat, Jelly, Irany (perhaps Irony was the intended spelling), Tomato, Coin (which grows on me every time I see it), Log, Shavin, and Treason. A lot of girls have boys names although I haven't had any boys with anything too wild. I've explained to the students with strange names that they have strange names and that they should consider changing them. Some of them do, some of them don't understand what I'm saying. Next class I think I'll try to make it more clear to some of the students that they should consider changing their names.