These Are The Extra Resources and Professional Tools I Used During 9 Years Of Teaching English In China
Posted: Wed May 03, 2023 7:16 pm
Hello everyone,
I want to leave a note on my experience teaching English in China because I did so for 9 years. This will let me share my experience and the tools that helped me have interesting classroom activities and keep grades well. I had resources available to me that other foreign teachers didn't seem to have, and the schools that I taught at appreciated what I could bring to their school and do for their students.
When you sign a contract to teach at a school in China, the contract specifies your responsibilities as a teacher. So you will know whether you are responsible for keeping grades, conducting tests, holding teacher-student performance reviews and so on. The interesting thing is that when you arrive at the school, it is amazing how little direction teachers are given. Essentially, a foreign teacher is given a textbook and a classroom schedule. Everything else is up to the teacher to find and do. Being given this much freedom and trust can be both rewarding and challenging at the same time. The foreign teacher is given creative freedom, but they must find the tools that help them do their job and make the additional content that constitutes a genuine academic course.
I went into China having studied TESOL courses on the side while in university, and I completed the basic 100-hour TESOL Certificate from OnTesol in Canada. So I had a little more formal knowledge of English and teaching resources than someone who only used English for completing their university degree in whatever subject they chose. The TESOL education and certificate is really worth while; it gives you the descriptive vocabulary for objectively handling the elements of English that native speakers already know at an intuitive level. So, besides finishing your degree, studying any TESOL courses that are available at your university and getting a TESOL certificate are one great resources to be recommended.
More practically speaking for one's time at a school in China, there are tools that I found indispensable while in China. These are listed below:
Make word games for students: https://www.puzzlemaker.discoveryeducation.com/
I can provide the link to this one here because it is free and thus not commercial, though I had to pay for it because I learned about through the OnTesol certificate program, among many other resources in their course. There are many games that are made available on the website; it is an amazing resource when you consider what it would take to make those programs on one's own and make them available on such a well-presented website.
The game that I used was the crossword puzzle, because vocabulary is an essential, foundational skill for students. Chinese students need a lot of pronunciation practice! I used it for a literature class that I conducted at a well-regarded private school in Shenzhen. We used a huge literature textbook from the California school system that had many short stories and high-lighted elements and techniques of literature. New vocabulary plays a significant role in being able to read a new story, so in addition to identifying new words, printing vocabulary-definition lists, practicing pronunciation and taking quizzes, the students were also given their vocabulary practice in the form of the crossword puzzle game, printed out on huge sheets of A1 paper. It was quite fun and added to the enjoyment of the course, when otherwise it was one of the more involved English courses taught at the school which earned me a teacher's award at the school.
Another computer program that I used for class activities was Starfruit Cards by Neon Starfruit Lab. I had access to early versions, and used it extensively for vocabulary games when there was a touchscreen computer at the front of the class and the class size was small enough, 10-15 students. Essentially, it is a card matching program that allowed Chinese students to match English words with their Chinese equivalents. They touch the cards on the screen, which allows them to peek at their content. Then they have to remember what word is on which card when they turn back over and then select the two cards that match. So it is a process of discovery and matching. It allowed for natural memory formation through game playing because the students had to hold the words and their meanings in their working memory in order to play through the game. I would give the link to the website, but that would be a commercial plug because it does cost some money. So it must be searched online for those who are interested.
The Chinese words for the card game could be looked up for pasting into the cards at: Dict.bing.com, a very useful website while teaching in China.
The school in Shenzhen, a school in Shandong and the provincial school of Harbin operated like the standard schools that I had attended as a young student in America, so there were more administrative duties for the foreign teachers as well. These included assigning homework, classwork, conducting regular testing, holding student grade reports and writing an end-of-semester report to the full-time administrators.
An important tool for the administrative part of teaching was Starfruit Chart which is a grade book that would calculate grades at the press of a button and generate visual charts that could be shown to students and pasted into end-of-semester reports so that they could easily understand the data one was talking about. Every school that I worked for that required assignments and grading and reports appreciated that I came equipped with this computer program. It was quite useful.
It was also useful for students because it made it very easy for me to tell them their grade at any time. At student-teacher meetings, it made it easy for me to tell them which type of assignment they need to improve in most. And since Chinese students are so academically competitive, they enjoyed my being able to use the program to tell them their rank in the class. It was probably their favorite thing to hear at the meetings.
Schools in America seem to use a school-wide grade book system with online access, but as a foreign teacher that is not available. So it is important to bring your own grade book computer program to avoid doing a lot of paperwork or spreadsheet and calculator time.
I used Neon Starfruit Lab's computer programs because they are built around the idea of being a foreign language teacher in another country. So I also used the small timer program in speaking classes at a private school and a professional school to manage speaking practice in the classroom when it was for the TOEFL iBT format speaking test. I projected it on the screen at the front of the classroom and it gave a good sense of organization to the speaking activity. The iBT speaking test questions are interesting in that they specify both a preparation time in which students are to begin thinking of how to answer a question and then a speaking period in which they actually answer a question. The timer rolled both of those into a single press of a button and gave visual feedback for the student speaking as well as the students listening.
That is mainly it. The puzzle maker at discovery education. Dict.bing.com. And the grade book, vocabulary card game and iBT speaking test timer by Neon Starfruit Lab.
Those aren't a lot of resources, but they are very important resources, which if I hadn't had, there is no way that my classes would have been as interesting or been able to have as many graded assignments.
Best of luck to the English teachers here, whichever country you teach in!
If anyone has questions about teaching in China, please feel free to ask me here. I taught there for nine years, in seven different cities and seven different schools that were both public, private and professional. So I think that there are many questions that I could answer for you. I studied East Asian culture as my major in university, but China is the once place that gave me culture shock, and it wasn't because they are unusually bad people but because they do not hold to western conventions. In the context of their east Asian environment, they are being perfectly conventional people. There is more than one cup of tea and there is more than one way to cut a cake.
I want to leave a note on my experience teaching English in China because I did so for 9 years. This will let me share my experience and the tools that helped me have interesting classroom activities and keep grades well. I had resources available to me that other foreign teachers didn't seem to have, and the schools that I taught at appreciated what I could bring to their school and do for their students.
When you sign a contract to teach at a school in China, the contract specifies your responsibilities as a teacher. So you will know whether you are responsible for keeping grades, conducting tests, holding teacher-student performance reviews and so on. The interesting thing is that when you arrive at the school, it is amazing how little direction teachers are given. Essentially, a foreign teacher is given a textbook and a classroom schedule. Everything else is up to the teacher to find and do. Being given this much freedom and trust can be both rewarding and challenging at the same time. The foreign teacher is given creative freedom, but they must find the tools that help them do their job and make the additional content that constitutes a genuine academic course.
I went into China having studied TESOL courses on the side while in university, and I completed the basic 100-hour TESOL Certificate from OnTesol in Canada. So I had a little more formal knowledge of English and teaching resources than someone who only used English for completing their university degree in whatever subject they chose. The TESOL education and certificate is really worth while; it gives you the descriptive vocabulary for objectively handling the elements of English that native speakers already know at an intuitive level. So, besides finishing your degree, studying any TESOL courses that are available at your university and getting a TESOL certificate are one great resources to be recommended.
More practically speaking for one's time at a school in China, there are tools that I found indispensable while in China. These are listed below:
Make word games for students: https://www.puzzlemaker.discoveryeducation.com/
I can provide the link to this one here because it is free and thus not commercial, though I had to pay for it because I learned about through the OnTesol certificate program, among many other resources in their course. There are many games that are made available on the website; it is an amazing resource when you consider what it would take to make those programs on one's own and make them available on such a well-presented website.
The game that I used was the crossword puzzle, because vocabulary is an essential, foundational skill for students. Chinese students need a lot of pronunciation practice! I used it for a literature class that I conducted at a well-regarded private school in Shenzhen. We used a huge literature textbook from the California school system that had many short stories and high-lighted elements and techniques of literature. New vocabulary plays a significant role in being able to read a new story, so in addition to identifying new words, printing vocabulary-definition lists, practicing pronunciation and taking quizzes, the students were also given their vocabulary practice in the form of the crossword puzzle game, printed out on huge sheets of A1 paper. It was quite fun and added to the enjoyment of the course, when otherwise it was one of the more involved English courses taught at the school which earned me a teacher's award at the school.
Another computer program that I used for class activities was Starfruit Cards by Neon Starfruit Lab. I had access to early versions, and used it extensively for vocabulary games when there was a touchscreen computer at the front of the class and the class size was small enough, 10-15 students. Essentially, it is a card matching program that allowed Chinese students to match English words with their Chinese equivalents. They touch the cards on the screen, which allows them to peek at their content. Then they have to remember what word is on which card when they turn back over and then select the two cards that match. So it is a process of discovery and matching. It allowed for natural memory formation through game playing because the students had to hold the words and their meanings in their working memory in order to play through the game. I would give the link to the website, but that would be a commercial plug because it does cost some money. So it must be searched online for those who are interested.
The Chinese words for the card game could be looked up for pasting into the cards at: Dict.bing.com, a very useful website while teaching in China.
The school in Shenzhen, a school in Shandong and the provincial school of Harbin operated like the standard schools that I had attended as a young student in America, so there were more administrative duties for the foreign teachers as well. These included assigning homework, classwork, conducting regular testing, holding student grade reports and writing an end-of-semester report to the full-time administrators.
An important tool for the administrative part of teaching was Starfruit Chart which is a grade book that would calculate grades at the press of a button and generate visual charts that could be shown to students and pasted into end-of-semester reports so that they could easily understand the data one was talking about. Every school that I worked for that required assignments and grading and reports appreciated that I came equipped with this computer program. It was quite useful.
It was also useful for students because it made it very easy for me to tell them their grade at any time. At student-teacher meetings, it made it easy for me to tell them which type of assignment they need to improve in most. And since Chinese students are so academically competitive, they enjoyed my being able to use the program to tell them their rank in the class. It was probably their favorite thing to hear at the meetings.
Schools in America seem to use a school-wide grade book system with online access, but as a foreign teacher that is not available. So it is important to bring your own grade book computer program to avoid doing a lot of paperwork or spreadsheet and calculator time.
I used Neon Starfruit Lab's computer programs because they are built around the idea of being a foreign language teacher in another country. So I also used the small timer program in speaking classes at a private school and a professional school to manage speaking practice in the classroom when it was for the TOEFL iBT format speaking test. I projected it on the screen at the front of the classroom and it gave a good sense of organization to the speaking activity. The iBT speaking test questions are interesting in that they specify both a preparation time in which students are to begin thinking of how to answer a question and then a speaking period in which they actually answer a question. The timer rolled both of those into a single press of a button and gave visual feedback for the student speaking as well as the students listening.
That is mainly it. The puzzle maker at discovery education. Dict.bing.com. And the grade book, vocabulary card game and iBT speaking test timer by Neon Starfruit Lab.
Those aren't a lot of resources, but they are very important resources, which if I hadn't had, there is no way that my classes would have been as interesting or been able to have as many graded assignments.
Best of luck to the English teachers here, whichever country you teach in!
If anyone has questions about teaching in China, please feel free to ask me here. I taught there for nine years, in seven different cities and seven different schools that were both public, private and professional. So I think that there are many questions that I could answer for you. I studied East Asian culture as my major in university, but China is the once place that gave me culture shock, and it wasn't because they are unusually bad people but because they do not hold to western conventions. In the context of their east Asian environment, they are being perfectly conventional people. There is more than one cup of tea and there is more than one way to cut a cake.