Teach English in SongshAn Zhen - Wuwei Shi

There is quite a bit of interesting information in Unit 19. This unit talks about different types of classes and teaching situations other than the typical adult ESL classroom situation. First, levels of beginners are discussed. For instance, the absolute beginner is different from a false beginner in that the latter has already had exposure to the English language, but has not retained it, perhaps because of lack of practice, or opportunity, or other reasons. There is also the adult beginner versus the young beginner. Teaching these types of beginners have very different types of challenges. Then there is the beginner whose native language does not have a Roman alphabet, such as a native Arabic speaker, or a native Chinese speaker. These students require much initial work on alphabet and reading that a student from France, for instance, would not require. Sometimes a teacher has an opportunity to teach a student in a one-to-one situation. This is a very different dynamic than teaching a classroom of several students. There are advantages as well as disadvantages, of course. The opportunity to interact with other learners, play group games, and so forth, are not available. However, the teacher does have the opportunity to work more closely with the student, spend more individual attention with him, get to know his particular likes, dislikes and experiences which can offer advantage in planning lessons for him. Teaching children, of course, is a very different sort of challenge than teaching an adult ESL class. In spite of possible discipline problems and sometimes lack of motivation on the part of some of the children, the rewards are said to be very great. One can see the progress of these small folks grow at a much more rapid rate, as children generally learn languages much quicker than adults. They like to have lots of fun, and, as their attention spans are shorter, the activities should not go on too long, and be quite varied. Teaching Business English or English for special purposes is another type of challenge. One may be called to teach a class in a business on the company property, the class comprising of several of the employees of the company. These students, or clients, may be on different levels, of different ages, and have positions of various prestige in the company. This tends to make the lesson planning quite a challenge. After assessing the levels of each of the students, it may be necessary to have the \"clients\" fill out a needs analysis. This is a questionnaire that asks about the needs of the particular student; that is, asking what sorts of activities related to their employment they specifically need to focus on. Would it be speaking, such as giving presentations, or negotiating, making telephone calls, socializing with clients, etc. Also, knowing what areas of the English language do they need to have extra help with. Knowing these and other related information about the students ahead of time give the teacher a great help in knowing how to prepare lessons for business English. The last topics of discussion in this unit are the possibility of multilingual classes as opposed to monolingual classes and the advantages/disadvantages of each situation. Multilingual classes have advantages in that the students have generally only one language option to communicate with each other, and that is English. In the classes I teach here in the United States, these are the kinds of classes I have had experience with. Here, practicing English is a necessity, a huge plus in a class that is learning English. Monolingual classes have students that are generally from the same background, or at least the same language. This means they usually have a lot of things in common besides language. Culturally, they are able to understand each other, for the most part. This is a different type of advantage. All in all, looking at the various scenarios that are available to a teacher of English, it is quite exciting to imagine the possibilities that may present themselves.