Buckland Weekly #33: Paperwork

When I worked as a teacher in college, in England, I had to spend far more time doing paperwork than I ever spent teaching. If you have worked in a school or college in a western country you will be familiar with the problem. In addition to lesson plans I had to do group profiles, individual learning plans (updated monthly), schemes of work, assessment schedules, Every Child Matters documentation, risk assessments,  exam results tables (for real and practice exams) and, it seemed, other endless forms that had to be filled in, checked, authorized and filed.

It was one of the reasons I eventually just decided to throw it all in and come teach in China. It’s the number one reason that teachers who leave the profession cite as being behind their decision to quit.

Things are certainly different for foreign teachers here in China.

The ONLY piece of paperwork that you HAVE to complete is your weekly lesson plan for each class. It’s possible that some schools will ask for other things but it isn’t common and even if they ask for everything that I have come across in six years here it still won’t amount to more than a tiny fraction of that asked for routinely back home.

With that said there are some pieces of paperwork that I find it useful to have. The school I am at, at the moment, hasn’t asked me for these but I do them anyway because they help me so I’d like to give you an idea of what I do. If you find these ideas useful then use them. If not, and if your school doesn’t want them, then feel free not to.

A Scheme of Work/Record of Work

At the start of the year I prepare, for each level that I am teaching, a scheme of work for the whole semester. Usually it’s almost the same as the one from last year but with dates and class numbers changed. It has one row for each week – there are usually fewer than twenty teaching weeks in a semester - and columns headed

Week Number, Week Start Date, Week End Date, Topic, Notes, and one column for each class at the level.

The first three of those are obvious. In the column headed topic I put the topic that I intend to teach that week. (For example: Animals, House and Home, Describing People.) In the Notes column I put anything I need to remember about what the lesson(for example: “vocabulary of rooms and contents in the house”, “lesson focus on possessives – this is my/your etc”) and other things, perhaps not directly about the lesson content, that I also need to know (for example “wider vocabulary range for class 1” or “check that quiz answers are up to date”.)

The other columns – the ones for each class – I leave blank for the moment. As the term progresses I fill them in with the following codes. Y – lesson was taught to this class, C – lesson was cancelled by the school, S – lesson was cancelled because I was sick, L – lesson was cancelled because I needed to take leave, X – lesson was cancelled for some other reason.

If I subsequently teach a lesson to a class that I missed in the week it was due I go back and change the code to R – lesson was repeated at a later date.

I find this document useful for all sorts of reasons.

                It gives me an overall plan for the semester

                It lets me see at a glance if any classes missed a particular lesson

                (And that lets me see if there is a lesson I can redo for a class if I am suddenly asked to teach an extra lesson to them.)

                It can, if needed be presented to the school both as a record of completed work and an indication of planned future work.

                The notes make sure that I don’t forget important things in the lesson.

Class Notes

I keep a short paragraph about each of the classes indicating anything that I need to know about that specific class. Are they notably stronger or weaker than other classes at their level? Do they have any discipline problems? Are there any physical problems with their classroom such as a computer that doesn’t work? Are there any particular types of activity that generally go well or go badly with that class?

I update this document as often as I need to. It isn’t something that needs to be presented to the school but it’s useful for you and will also help if the school asks you for a class by class report at the end of the semester.

Disciplinary Notes

Chinese students are mostly well behaved compared to their western counterparts but you will sometimes have problems because they are, after all, teenagers with all the attitudes and problems that can bring.

I keep a long of any major disciplinary issues that I have had to deal with.  It contains the date, class number, student name (if it’s relevant and I know it), whether or not I had to report it to their class teacher (home room teacher) and what, if anything, the school did about it.

This can, if you have to, be shown to the school, and will be evidence that you are not complaining about a non-existent problem.

Exam Documentation

You are very unlikely to be asked to do exams with your students. Unfortunately, my current school does want exams (though this year I am experimenting with a more continuous assessment style of grading). I have a couple of forms I use for this but if your school requires something of the sort it would be unlikely to match exactly with the way I have to do it.

Schools often fail to realize the logistical difficulties of doing an oral exam for a class of eighty students. Their thinking is that every other subject can be examined for a whole class in forty minutes so why can’t yours?  It can be quite hard to convince them that you need at least a few minutes for EACH student to do an oral exam – and even that is woefully inadequate when it comes to providing any genuinely useful information.

If your school wants you to do exams talk to me about it and I will help you devise something suitable.

And that’s it. That’s all that I do, apart from lesson plans, and for most schools none of that is required. It is however useful and I’d recommend that you do it (apart from the exam documentation which you probably won’t need to do, anyway.)

Buckland Weekly #32: Not so SMART

I’m going to venture into an area where my views might be considered contentious (or even flat out wrong) by educational theorists back home in England. I’m going to talk about something that, because of the limited time available, I rather gloss over when I do the teacher orientations here in China. I’m going to discuss lesson objectives and SMART targets. Probably more than any other specifically teaching topic my views on this are not the mainstream ones.

The reason I’ve decided to bring it up was a post on another facebook group, where a teacher listed her lesson aims and the lesson aims that the inspector thought she should have in an observation. I’ll paraphrase her a little as the specifics aren’t relevant to the point I want to make, only the general principal. (And her aims were reading and writing aims where we focus entirely on speaking and listening.)

Let’s write some aims in the style the teacher thought appropriate. Let’s assume, for this exercise, that the lesson topic is “the environment” (and of course that it is an EFL class).

The teacher’s aims might be

1. Students will be able to express a view upon the topic and express agreement or disagreement with other students’ views.

2. Students will show an understanding of polite discourse strategies.

3. Students will be able to identify and challenge false statements and offer counter arguments.

In the post that I saw, the inspector had offered an alternative in the form of

1. Students will understand the importance of taking protective measures to ensure that the consequences of pollution on the environment are minimized.

The majority of the subsequent discussion focused on the teacher’s aims suggesting that they were too vague and not SMART enough (we’ll come on to SMART later.) Almost no one mentioned the glaring problem with the alternative.

This is a language class. The alternative is NOT a language based objective. It’s a political objective. In my view it has absolutely no place on a lesson plan unless you are teaching civics or environmental studies. As English teachers our role is NOT to shape the minds and opinions of our students. It’s to give them the tools to express their own minds and opinions. We can argue all day about whether the teacher’s aims were good or bad but the inspector’s suggestion was, in my opinion, just plain wrong.

So, let’s get more general and ask a few important questions.

How many aims should there be?

How detailed and specific should they be?

How do you go about writing good aims?

What do you do in the classroom to ensure the aims are met?

Should you include lesson aims on your lesson plan at all?

Assuming for the moment that the answer to the last question is going to be “yes”, let’s look at the others.

How many aims should you have? Well, your lesson will be about forty minutes long to a class of between fifty and eighty students. How many objectives is it feasible to have in those circumstances? I’d say two or three, similar, perhaps, to the ones in the example. You could have just one in some classes; you would find it impossible with more than four or five. I’d say one to three is a good number.

The next two questions – “how detailed should they be” and “how do you write them” are where we come to SMART targets and where I’m going to go against the conventional advice. For those who haven’t come across it before SMART is an acronym from the world of business jargon. You see it in various forms. The one I am most familiar with is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-Limited. The theory is that all your aims should show all of those features. You should be specific. You shouldn’t say “Students will learn new vocabulary.” You should say “Students will learn the following list of ten new words.” It should be measurable (and you should show how you can measure it –“There will be a spelling test for the words at the end of the lesson.”) It should be achievable – “ten words” is OK, “a thousand words” is impossible. It should be realistic. The words in question should relate directly to the topic and be within the normal expected vocabulary range for discussion of it – very obscure or technical terms should be left out. And you should set a time for it – “by the end of the lesson/activity”. So, in this case you would end up with something like

“Students will, by the end of the lesson, learn the meanings and spellings of the following ten words and will be able to complete a spelling and comprehension task demonstrating their new knowledge.”

I would like to suggest that this is nonsense, especially when teaching in a Chinese state school.

And it is nonsense because of the next question – what do you do in the classroom? In a business context, where you may be trying to implement a new sales strategy or design and build a new car then this kind of thinking makes sense but a classroom isn’t like that. A classroom is filled with people and people are crazy unpredictable things. You can set all the SMART targets you like but unless you set a target along the lines of “Each student will speak one word by the end of the class.” you won’t be able to implement it. Possibly not even then.

So, the last question. Should you include lesson aims on your plan at all?

You might think from what I’ve said so far that I’m going to say “no”, but I’m not. It is important to know exactly what you are setting out to achieve in a lesson, and with each individual task you have in the lesson. What I would say is that you shouldn’t worry too much about exactly how you phrase it or about whether it is SMART or not. Just think about what you are trying to do. Is the lesson primarily intended to give students new vocabulary on a specific topic? Is it intended to practice asking and answering personal questions? Is it intended to develop their skills in taking part in a discussion?

None of those things is even vaguely SMART but I would suggest that given the class sizes and the lesson lengths – not to mention that we are employed solely to improve their speaking and listening skills - they are far more realistic aims than you would come up with in an hour of trying to bend them into something more specific. As for the other things in the acronym they all kind of come automatically with a sensible lesson plan. You know how long each activity will take, you will have designed it to be achievable, you will know your classes well enough to make it realistic. You don’t have to make your overall aims fit all those criteria too. If your lesson is well designed and planned that will be enough.

And do, please, make sure that your aims are genuine language aims, not aims intended to push your own views onto the students as that inspector’s aim so clearly was. 

Buckland Weekly #31: Some Notes On Lesson Plans

It will be orientation time in two weeks and if the orientation group is anything like the previous ones there will be a mix of people with teaching experience and people without it. Those of you with experience will already know the value of having a good lesson plan, those without will find out quite quickly once you start the job.

Lesson planning will be covered in the orientation but it’s one of those areas where there isn’t enough time to do it as thoroughly as I’d like so I’d like to talk about it a little here. Rather than start with what a lesson plan is and how to write one I’d like to start by sharing something a colleague said to me when I was straight off my CELTA course and starting my first teaching job. Chris, my far more experienced colleague, observed me in my first week and then gave me a lot of really useful feedback about the lesson… and the lesson plan.

The most important thing he said to me was that the lesson plan isn’t written for the school or the inspectors or even the students. The lesson plan is your document. It’s written by you and for you. If there is something that you find it useful to include, include it. If there are things other people tell you to include but you don’t find useful, then leave them out. Feel free to scribble over it during lessons, to make any amendments that you want to and to stick to it or ignore it completely as you wish. It’s yours. Own it.

Now, when you do your orientation part of the process is to prepare and teach a demonstration lesson to a group of real Chinese students. Jennifer and I will be watching that and I will be giving you your feedback about it. For that particular lesson, whether you are already experienced or not, I will want to see a very detailed lesson plan – far more detailed than is actually necessary for your real teaching. I’ll also be suggesting that, if you aren’t already an experienced teacher you write lesson plans in that level of detail for a few weeks until you find the style that suits you best.

Here, then, are a few tips for writing plans.

1. Before you write anything at all spend some time thinking about the lesson. You will have a topic in mind. Think about what activities you can do with that topic. Think about how you will structure the lesson.

2. When you have your idea for how the lesson will go write yourself a rough bullet point plan. Include the various phases of the lesson and the types of activity but no detail.

3. For each activity in your lesson make notes on how you will explain it. What will you say? What will you write on the board? What will you demonstrate?

4. When you’ve done all of that you can make your proper lesson plan. You can fill in the detail. Plan your activities, write down on the plan exactly how the activity should be organized. Write down on the plan anything that you MUST tell the students so that you don’t forget it in the lesson. Write down on the plan ALL the instructions you intend to write on the board so that you don’t make mistakes or miss things out.

5. Include on the plan a contingency for what to do if the students don’t understand the instructions. Also include a stand-alone extension activity in case the students finish all the work more quickly than anticipated.

6. When the plan is finished leave it sit for a couple of hours then take another look at it. Can you see any areas where there might be problems? Do you think the timings are right for a forty minute lesson? Change anything you are concerned about.

7. (This one is important.) Look at each activity independently and ask yourself one simple question – “Why am I doing this?” If the answer for any activity is “to use up time in the lesson” throw that activity away and substitute something with a genuine learning aim.

8. Make two copies and file one. Use the other one in class. For the one you use remember that it’s a working document. You can change it around as you see fit. The other one, in spite of what I said earlier, IS for the school. They don’t usually ask to see them but just in case it’s wise to keep something that you can hand them if they ask. It doesn’t really matter if you made changes on the fly – just give them a copy as it was originally planned and everything will be fine.

One final thing. If you go to lesson plans section of this blog you will see a lot of my lesson plans. They probably aren’t as detailed as you will want to use at first because I’ve been teaching for a long time and have developed my own particular style. You will develop your own style quickly enough. As for the plans on the blog you should feel free to take them, use them, amend them… do what you will with them. It’s what they are there for. Just try not to use them in the demonstration lesson because that’s where I want to see your ideas not mine. 

Buckland Weekly #30 - Differences in Chinese and Western Techniques Part 3

Quite some time ago I started a series of articles about various topics that had come up in conversation with a Chinese colleague – all linked by the fact that his opinions and mine on effective teaching techniques were frequently vastly at odds. He’s a good friend and a good teacher and he was only repeating what most teachers here do and believe but the essence of it all was totally different to the way we see language teaching in the west.

Other things interrupted me and I never completed the series so I’ll do so now. 

First let me list the things I intended to discuss in the articles.

Learning long word lists is an effective strategy for vocabulary acquisition.

Reading a dictionary is an effective strategy for vocabulary acquisition.

Reading aloud is a useful tool in learning a language.

Rote memorisation of text passages is a useful tool in language learning

Students who do not wish to learn should be ignored as long as they are not disruptive.

Punishment is an effective way to correct mistakes.

Solitary learning is preferable to group activity.

Some students cannot or will not learn.

Passing an Exam means your English is good.

If your English is good you will pass your exam.

In a fast paced lesson students will be forced to learn.

I had covered the first four so now let’s take a look at the next one

Students who do not wish to learn should be ignored as long as they are not disruptive.

This was possibly the one where we had the most fundamental disagreement. My friend has a fondness for idioms and he said “let sleeping students lie”. I’ve heard the same idea from both Chinese and foreign teachers expressed either in those words or others. The principle is that you should teach the ones who show an interest in learning and as for the others – as long as they cause no trouble in class – let them be. I couldn’t disagree more. I have two problems with it – an ideological one and a practical one. Ideologically it goes against everything I believe. I am in the classroom to try to teach everybody. Writing a student off without trying feels lazy, disrespectful and wrong. I can’t bring myself to do it. Off course I know that I won’t always be successful. There will sometimes be students that I can’t reach no matter how I try. The difference is that I don’t believe that it gives me a license not to try. Also, I have had many occasions where a student that other teachers consider difficult has started out with a bad attitude in my class but finished up by joining in and progressing. I’m not pretending this is always true. I have a student this year who has spent ninety per cent of every lesson asleep. When I wake him, he scowls at me and immediately puts his head down again. The other teachers tell me he is like this in every lesson and that they confidently expect him to fail everything. He won’t, they tell me, be bothered. He is in school because he has to be and will, as soon as he can, leave to go work on his family farm. He doesn’t think he needs to learn anything so no one has been able to motivate him to try.

Of course there is also the practical problem. As oral English teachers much of the work we do is in pairs or groups. A non-participating student doesn’t just affect himself he spoils the task for his whole group. If you are a keen and eager student and you are partnered in a speaking task with a student who won’t even wake up then you aren’t able to learn either. You know when you have such a student because when you include him or her in a group the others always complain. There is not much you can do. Limitations on time and the logistics of the classroom layout make it hard or even impossible to just move people about so you just have to try on a week by week basis to organize the groups in such a way that everyone who wants to at least gets a chance to work with different people.

So what’s the answer? Well I once observed a teacher who took the wrong answer to an extreme. In the lesson I watched he interacted with no more than half a dozen students from a class of about seventy. When I asked him about it he said that he was only going to teach the ones who wanted to learn – and by that he meant the few who volunteered answers to his questions. That wasn’t just ignoring the ones who didn’t want to work but also the majority of those who did but who couldn’t – for whatever reason – offer an answer. In my lessons I always make an effort to include everyone. I wake up the sleepers and ask them questions. People gazing out of the window can also be sure they will draw my attention and get asked. In groups I will either try to make the reluctant students lead the group or, if their English isn’t strong enough for that, tell the group leader that they can help them in Chinese if they have to. Students who seem to just be struggling get easier questions and more time so that they can build their confidence until they join in more freely.

The bottom line is that “let sleeping students lie” may be a common philosophy here but that doesn’t make it a good one. You should try to reach everyone – accept that maybe you will be unsuccessful but you have to try.

Buckland Weekly #28: Working For Buckland

I have been asked to write about my own experience of working for Buckland.

As always, everything here - other than purely factual details such as who does what in the office - is my own opinion.

This entry can also be found on the Buckland website.

You read a lot of things on the internet about why you should never use agencies when you are planning to teach abroad. Some of it is true, some of it is exaggerated, some of it is personal opinion and some of it is nonsense.

Of course some agencies are better to work with than others and even within a single agency some teachers will find their experience is good and others won't. Everything here reflects my own personal experience. I am currently within my sixth year with them and that in itself should tell you a lot. I wouldn't still be here after all this time unless I was happy with them. So let me start by describing what normally happens when you arrive in China.

The Orientation Period

Every new teacher is met at the airport and Buckland staff drive the new teacher to the offices where accommodation of a good standard is provided. Depending on which days the orientation course is running for a small fee a very good lunch is also provided.

The orientation is, at the moment, mostly done by me. It consists of sessions about living in China, working in a Chinese public school, teaching in general, teaching in China and lesson preparation. There is also a session on basic Chinese which is not given by me – even after all this time my Chinese is terrible. A good teacher isn't necessarily a good student.

The orientation takes about five days in total and also includes a short teaching practice (to real students) and your medical exam. You pay for the medical exam but it is the only real expense that you have in this period.

The orientation period actually isn't very stressful – depending on when it is you might get taken out to dinner, taken out for a nice swim in a secluded pool on the Yulong river, taken for a beer or an Indian meal by me or taken for a stroll around Yangshuo. When it's all over you will have a chat with Jennifer who will give you all the information about the school where you should be teaching.

You might need to pay for your transport to the school but that money should be reimbursed by the school.

And the next thing that happens is that you start teaching!

The Buckland Office

The Buckland offices are based in Yangshuo, where the orientation takes place. You may want to visit Yangshuo later as it is a beautiful part of China and during the orientation you may be too busy to see much of it. If you need to contact the office there are various people you should get to know.

For questions or issues about your visa or documentation you should contact Jasmine who will help you find your way with all the tricky Chinese bureaucracy.

Your point of contact about salary questions is Sue who sends out an email shortly before your salary is due to be paid to check if you have had any time off and to make sure that you get paid promptly.

For general issues about your school and life in China you can contact Yuki or me. anything you send to me that I can't answer I will pass on to the right person for you, so if you aren't sure who you need for your particular question just let me know.

Jennifer deals with recruitment and placement and will give you all the details about your school before you go.

The manager, based in Xi-An, is Frank. He's responsible for all the teachers in that area but from time to time the office will also consult with him on matters concerning other teachers.

Also, not based in the office, there is Ping who deals with initial applications and is the person you have probably dealt with when you sent your CV.

Finally there is me. If you have questions about your teaching – about text books, or lesson plans, or dealing with your classes – I'll be here to help you resolve them.

All the staff are friendly and approachable and everyone does their best to help with any issues and make sure that your stay in China and your work at the school go smoothly and comfortably.

Things to expect at your school

You won't be paid until the end of the first month so you should bring enough money with you to last – remembering that it is also the most expensive month as you will want to buy things for your apartment. So let me go on now to talk about apartments.

The apartment may not be what you are used to back home. Kitchens and bathrooms are always smaller than we typically have. Bathrooms are almost always of the wetroom-shower type and rarely have baths. The furnishing may also, as is often the case in China, be quite sparse compared with the usual British or American apartment. However you will see from the contract that all the necessities should be provided. If anything is missing then a word with your FAO (your administrator and school liaison) should get it sorted out quickly. My experience is that schools try very hard to accommodate your needs. If there is anything you feel is wrong then an email to me or to the office will usually sort it out quickly. One of the definite advantages of working with Buckland is that once the office is aware of an issue they will try to sort it out for you.

Documentation And Paperwork

Another advantage is in dealing with documentation and paperwork. This is China. There is a lot of documentation and paperwork and it varies from province to province and city to city. I have always found them to be very good at helping to get it done. Of course individuals may have problems because of local requirements and if you had to sort them out alone it could be difficult. This is, for me at least, the biggest advantage of having an agency. They understand the things that can happen and how to deal with them. In my time here I have had the occasional bureaucratic snarl-up but with Buckland's help it has always been sorted out.

There isn't much more that needs to be said about working for Buckland other than that they have, in all that time, always paid me on time, always been prepared to help me with any problems at my school and always listened when I've needed them to. And now they also have me as a first point of contact for any teaching issues that might arise.

There are a few other things I can say about living and working in China.

Where you will be based

Buckland places teachers in schools all over China. This means that you may not be based centrally in a large city. You could be in a smaller city without many other foreigners about. You need to be prepared for this. If you are expecting to be placed in the centre of Beijing or Shanghai you are likely to be disappointed. However it's my experience that if you try to make local friends and to enjoy the experience smaller cities can be very rewarding. People, especially your colleagues, are always friendly but you need to make a little effort for yourself too. Sometimes you will have other Buckland teachers at the same school or at nearby schools, but not always. On the other hand staying in touch using wechat is free and very easy so you can provide support for each other if it's needed.

Living and Working In China

Even if you are an experienced teacher you might, at first, find things very different here. To begin with you could have up to eighty students in your class. It isn't as daunting as it sounds and methods for dealing with it are covered in depth in the orientations. Also, if you were already an English teacher you probably taught the full range of skills – speaking, listening, reading, writing, grammar, spelling – but here your main focus is to teach speaking and listening. You will, incidentally, need a little of the other things to support your main role but that job is taken care of primarily by their Chinese teachers.

What can you expect of your classes?

On the whole, they are well-behaved and attentive but children are children all over the world and you may get individuals or sometimes classes that are more troublesome but in my time here I haven't come across anything in class that I couldn't handle and the other teachers at the school are always willing to help and advise you if you need it. Dealing with any problems is also covered in the orientation but it's largely a matter of common sense and not being afraid to ask for help if you need it.

What can you expect of your location?

You may not have everything you would like but you will certainly have everything you need. Even smaller cities usually have all the shops to buy essentials – after all other people live there too – and everywhere has restaurants and coffee shops and bars because eating out and socializing is a very large part of Chinese culture. If, on the other hand, you are looking for western food or western style entertainment such as movies in English, night clubs or even just bookshops with English books, you are less likely to find them. You might in some places but usually not. Often you will only be a bus ride away from a larger city where you might find some of those things but again this isn't always the case. You need to be flexible and adaptable. And that brings me to the final point. What you need to do to enjoy your time teaching in China.

Making the most of it

Teaching in China, especially with all the support Buckland provide, can be a very rewarding experience and very enjoyable. people come for six months and stay for six years. But it all depends on you. Above all you need to be flexible and to be open to new experiences and other cultures. You need to understand that many things, especially bureaucracy and paperwork work differently here and not to get angry or frustrated when things seem to be taking a long time or becoming more difficult than you expected. Patience is one of the keys to thriving here. Once you learn that things are the way they are and that you aren't going to be able to change them then you can relax and enjoy your experience. I would say that the key things you need to bring to your role are patience, professionalism, flexibility and an openness to new experiences.

My Experience

I will finish with a few words about my experience of schools here. I taught in Baiyin for three years at various schools – Middle Schools 8, 10 and 11 and Experimental School. In all of them I found the teachers to be helpful and friendly – I still have friends at those schools that I meet up with whenever I visit the city. Things like administration and school events varied from school to school but I always found that by making myself an active part of the school life I got along fine. Classes also vary, of course, but if you have the help and support of the local teachers it goes a long way to sorting out any problems you come across.

Since I moved to Yangshuo I have taught Juniors and Middle-Schoolers at Yangshuo Middle School and again love the school and find that the teachers are really happy to help.

Both in Baiyin and here I have joined in with school sports days, judged school speech and drama competitions, helped organize student performances and a host of other things. I have had a great time and I hope that you all find it equally rewarding.

Good luck, and enjoy your stay.

*For new teachers who start late and miss the orientation period, one of two things happen. If they have time to come to Yangshuo I give a one-to-one reduced version of it taking one day. IF they go straight to their school and don't come to Yangshuo the information will be sent be email.

**Not a typo – there are a couple of good Iindian restaurants in Yangshuo and I always take advantage of the orientation periods to pay a visit.

Buckland Weekly #27: Now that the training wheels are off

As always, this post is the opinion of the Author only and should not be taken as representing any official company policy.

The orientations are over then. Another group of teachers is scattered to the far corners of China. Another group of teachers will be about to face a class of Chinese students for the first time. All of them did pretty well in their demonstration lessons but, of course, teaching a thirty minute demonstration to nine students is a little different to getting right into the spirit of school life with twenty or so classes of fifty or sixty students. So I thought this might be a good  time, to round up some of the more common issues that teachers have when they walk into that first classroom. Some people may recognize some of these things from their feedback but none of them are unique – whatever issues come up, I’ve seen before and every teacher has experienced them. And you will probably come up against them again.

So let’s get started.

The number one issue that affects almost every teacher I have ever seen is speed. Of course there are issues around clarity and diction and accent but speed is the killer. No matter how clearly you speak, no matter how precise and accurate your diction is, no matter that you have the perfect accent – if you speak too quickly your students will have trouble understanding you. The braver students may ask you to speak more slowly but most of them will sit in silence not understanding you. It’s easy to start off slowly, intending to keep an even, understandable speed. It’s easy to start off that way but hard to maintain it through the lesson. Try to keep a slow, even tone and if you notice yourself speeding up, or more likely notice the class’s eyes glazing over – take a deep breath and slow down.

While we are talking about talking, let’s take a look at those other points, clarity, diction and accent. Let’s start in the middle – with diction. Assuming you have managed to keep your speed OK the other important factor is to enunciate your words properly. This isn’t the same as pronouncing them properly – that’s a feature of your accent which I’ll mention later. In normal speech, when we talk to our friends, words are run together – ‘wordsruntogether’ – which is fine for us as we are “programmed” to hear our native language that way. When talking to the students try to make sure that each word is separately spoken – that doesn’t mean leaving exaggerated gaps – you should still try to maintain a normal rhythm to your speech –  just make sure each word is audible. And that of course brings us to clarity. This is more than just a matter of diction – it encompasses the whole thing – choice of words, pronunciation of words, structure of your sentences, diction, speed, repetition. What you say needs to be understandable within the limits of the students existing knowledge. So no matter how slow or how well enunciated if you say, “And now I would like you to modify the sentences by the addition of appropriate adjectives and adverbs”, they aren’t going to do it. They won’t understand. Think about what it means and what you actually want them to do. “Add some describing words. Like this…” followed by a clear example, is the way to go. It doesn’t matter what level the class is or what level the task is, the instructions should be delivered in the lowest level you can possibly manage so that every student has a chance. Remember in a typical Chinese class there will be a full range of previous knowledge and experience from students who can hold a conversation in English to students who can’t answer “What is your name?” Your instructions should NEVER be given in language that is at a higher level than the task itself.

And so that brings me to accent. There is an earlier post on the subject that goes into detail so I won’t repeat it here. I’ll just restrict it to the advice that you should be aware that you have an accent. For example outside the Southern states the words “y’all” and “y’alls” are definitely non-standard. That doesn’t mean they are wrong if they are part of your native dialect but schools prefer standard English to be taught. My own dialect includes words like “bostin”, “bist” and “bay”, and exchanges like “Them bay bays, bin em?” “Ar, them bin bays bay em”¹ which are damned near to incomprehensible to anyone born twenty miles from Wolverhampton.

My favourite example of non-standard grammar is the use of the word “while” which in certain parts of England is used to mean “until” rather than “during”. This could cause problems with the sentence “Wait while the lights are red, then go.”

Be aware of your accent and try to moderate your use of dialect words and structures.

Enough about your speaking. Let’s look at some issues that come up time and time again regarding lesson plans. In the training I try to make two things clear about the plans. First I try to get across that the lesson plan is your document, that you should write it in a way that helps you with your lessons. It isn’t the school’s document² to be done to some predefined format that you will be in trouble for not following. It is there so that you don’t forget things and your lessons go smoothly.

The second thing is that I have been teaching for almost twenty years now³  and I still write plans for every lesson and I still include everything on them that I think will help me. As a new teacher you should include as much detail as you can. You are going to write instructions on the board? Write them on the plan first. There is a list of essential vocabulary? Write it - WITH the definitions you will give – on the plan. There are things you think might go wrong? Write how you will deal with them on the plan.

As time goes by and you get more practiced at it you can get away with writing just keyword prompts for yourself but you will always want to have the plan.

When you are making those plans think about the practicality of the tasks. If you are intending to do a word search as a warm up then think about how you will show the answers. Will you try to write the word search grid on the board? To write a 15x15 grid of letters on the board so that the columns and rows line up and everything is legible is more difficult than you think and takes a lot longer than you think it will. If you are doing it on a poster then you can’t let students come and mark the answers or you will need to make a copy for every class.

If you are going to generate your vocabulary with one of the hundred possible variations on Hangman then make a list of the specific words you will use. And make sure you can spell them.

Another common planning related problem in the demonstration lessons – every year – is planning too much or too little work and then failing to monitor the time accurately. There is little to be done about planning too much. You will fix that with practice. You can do something about planning to little. Always think of an extension activity that you can do if the students get through the planned work faster than anticipated. And⁴ try to make sure that it’s an open activity than can be used if you have two minutes spare or ten minutes spare.

While you are delivering the lesson keep a close eye on the time. Don’t be forever looking at your watch but do try to make sure you know where you are in the lesson and shorten or extend activities accordingly.

Let’s finish by going back to talking and looking at the easiest one to fix – volume. You may find that, like me, you can easily speak loud enough for everyone to hear. If you can, that’s good, but if you can’t, don’t panic. Talk with someone in the office and get one of the microphone/speaker sets that teachers here commonly use. Just remember to turn it off while you walk around monitoring individuals and groups so that every correction that you make and every bit of assistance you give isn’t broadcast to the whole class – embarrassing the student in question and distracting everyone else.

And, of course, if other questions come up, contact me and I’ll do my best to offer some advice.

1. bostin = very good, bist = are, bay=aren’t

“Them bay bays, bin em?” = “Those are not bay windows⁵, are they?”

“Ar, them bin bay windows, bey em?” = “Yes, they are bay windows, aren’t they?”

2. If you ever teach back home it will be the school’s document, or worse yet the Government’s document and will be in a proscribed and unvarying format but here it’s yours and yours alone.

3 And typing that sentence made me feel old, given that I’d already had another twenty year career before I became a teacher.

4. For any picky grammarians, don’t let anyone tell you that you can't start a sentence with “And”. If it’s good enough for Shakespeare, Dickens and the Bible, it’s good enough for me.

5. “Bay windows” are the sort that protrude from the house. I have no idea what the American term would be.

Buckland Weekly #26: If this ISN'T Kansas, where the hell is it?

As always..

opinion of the author...

not to be taken as official...

etc etc etc

Let me tell you about my first few weeks in China. I’d been a visitor to China on several previous trips and thought I had a pretty good idea of the place. That’s why I decided to teach here and not somewhere else.

So, I arrived in Yangshuo a few days before my orientation was due to start. I arrived here but my luggage didn’t. No one had told me that I needed to collect it and recheck it when I changed planes at Guangzhou. Still, no problem. It turned up a couple of days later. Meantime I wandered around the town, relaxed and recovered from my jet-lag.

It’s a nice place for a bit of a holiday but it’s very deceptive. It isn’t really much like anywhere else in China. There are hundreds of places to get western food, western beer and western conversation with the tourists who, at this time of year, seem to outnumber the locals. It’s easy.

Then we did the orientation which, because I was already a trained and experienced teacher in the UK was also easy.

Then we were allocated our cities and schools.

When that happens, unless it’s a school that Buckland is dealing with for the first time, you should see a write-up about it from the teacher who was previously there. I was allocated a school in Baiyin and the write-up made the place sound horrible. The previous teacher clearly hadn’t enjoyed it.

I loved the place. There were only five foreigners in the whole city – three of them working for Buckland – and almost no one spoke much English. It was dry and dusty and industrial. And I loved it. At the end of my first year there I didn’t take much persuading to stay. I only left at the end of three years because they city authorities had decided not have any more foreign teachers. I had found it friendly, and comfortable and I’d settled into a very nice way of life.

But the previous teacher hadn’t liked it, and I know other teachers who were sent there who grew to hate it passionately. So, how come there can be such a difference?  It is after all the same place. How can one person feel that they have, somehow, been cheated, while another thinks they have been given a perfect position?

First, let’s digress for a moment and talk about Chinese geography.

One thing that might cause confusion is that some of the terminology may be being used in ways that are different to the ways you have previously used them and that can lead to you thinking you have been misled. Let’s try to clear that up.

The country is divided into Provinces. (Some of them are not called Provinces, but that’s just for political reasons).

Below Provinces there is what is called the Prefecture level consisting of large cities. “City” is one of the words that may not be being used as you think it is. Cities can be huge administrative divisions encompassing many other smaller cities and counties. For example. Xi’An is a city but if you are thinking of comparing it to London or New York or Sydney then think about this. According to Wikipedia it has, within it, 106 sub-districts, 69 towns, 721 residential communities and 3025 villages. Its metropolitan area is a little over 3,800 square kilometres but its total area is a little under 10,000 square kilometers.

Below that level you have the County level. Counties are smaller than Prefectures but may include county level cities (remember you are already inside a prefecture level city) or various types of district.

Below that there are towns, which may be as big as some cities back home.

And below that there are villages. It can be very confusing. If you are in one of those villages or towns inside a county level city you may also, technically, still be inside the Prefecture level city for that area.

All of this, if not understood can lead you to think that you have been promised one thing and given another. If you are of a cynical turn of mind you might think you have been a bait-and-switch victim. You haven’t. You might find yourself in a city with a different name an hour and a half bus ride away from what you think of as Xi’An but you are still within the boundaries of what is politically designated as Xi’An. This can be a source of confusion if the office thinks “He asked for Xi’An. We placed him in Xi’An.” While the teacher thinks “I asked for Xi’An. This isn’t Xi’An.” AND BOTH OF THEM ARE RIGHT.

I think that kind of thing may be part of the issue with people liking or not liking where they end up teaching. It’s a matter of expectations. If you were expecting to be at the heart of a thriving metropolis with a fascinating multi-cultural night-life and a Starbucks on every corner then you are likely to be disappointed. Most of the schools are in smaller cities where it’s possible there may be a branch of KFC or McDonald’s but far more likely that there won’t be. There will be places to eat, drink and relax but it may not be what you were expecting.

People can sometimes let that disappointment lead to resentment and that’s when they stop noticing all the wonderful and interesting things around them and start seeing negatives everywhere. Other people, especially if they have left those expectations at home, will notice how different it all is but view that as a positive thing, a new experience to be enjoyed for what it is.

Of course, it’s possible that you might genuinely be placed somewhere where there isn’t much to do or many places to go and there isn’t a convenient way to get to anywhere larger for a break. It’s unlikely, but it’s possible that your reasons for disliking a place are perfectly valid but unless there are serious issues it isn’t likely that there is much to be done about it. If that happens you should try to make friends with as many teachers as possible at the school. Find out where they go and what they do to have a social life. They are, after all, in a similar situation to you even if they are local. Don’t wait for them to tell you things, try to be pro-active in asking them and finding things out.

And if it does start to get you down call up your friends in other parts of China or contact me. Talking about it can help. Just try not to let small, solvable problems build on each other until they snowball into a huge resentment.

Buckland Weekly In Brief: Astrill VPN

A brief addendum to the information about computers that I posted some time ago. It IS currently possible to download the Astrill VPN in China without already having a VPN. You can do it from www.astrill4u.com. Sorry I don't know about other VPNs.

I also don't know if it is permanent or if it too will eventually be blocked.

Just thought I'd mention it.

Buckland Weekly #25: Do you understand?

As always the contents of this post are the opinion and experience of the author only and should not be taken as reflecting the official position of BIEG.

Do you understand?

I recently read an article on the internet about things you should always say to your class. Most of it I agreed with. You should always greet them at the start of the lesson. (I always begin with “Good morning/afternoon. How are you all today?” It's become a standing joke in some classes where the students will shout back in unison “We're so-so!”) You should always say goodbye. You should always offer praise and help where needed. Uncontentious stuff.

However it also suggested that you should frequently ask “Do you understand?” and there we part company because I firmly believe that, at least for the classes we teach, this is about the worst question you can ask.

Let's look at it from another angle, from the point of view not of a foreign English teacher or a student in a foreign English teacher's class, but as a student in one of their other classes. If you observe a Chinese teacher you will usually notice a few things straight away. First of all the pace of the lessons is breakneck with information being delivered at a breathless pace that must be leaving some of the students behind. Then you will notice that they style is mainly what in my day was called “chalk and talk”. The teacher writes stuff on the board and reads it out and the students copy it down. You may, depending on what subject it is, also observe that there is a lot of repetitive drilling with the whole class reciting either from their books or by repeating back things the teacher said. What you probably won't see is very much in the way of questions and answers with individual students. Even where a teacher does ask a question only a few students will be likely to answer and the answer will always be right. Students are very unwilling to give answers where they are not sure because, rightly or wrongly, they are afraid that a wrong answer will result in punishment. Minor punishment, perhaps in the form of additional homework, but punishment nonetheless.

In Chinese culture there is also the concept of “face” which is similar in some ways to respect. Similar in some ways but different in others. Giving a wrong answer, or an answer that is not the one the teacher wants, results in a loss of face for the student who perceives it as showing him as foolish.

So, when you ask “Do you understand?” the student perception of that question is that you want the answer “yes” and that's the answer you get. Whether the student understands or not the answer is “yes” because any other answer indicates that he hasn't been paying enough attention and might make you angry with him. It will also diminish him in the other students eyes.

Of course none of that is true but it is how it is seen. Initially, especially if you are the first foreign teacher they have had, you will need to work hard at convincing them that, in our subject at least, a wrong answer is better than no answer and that all that will happen is that you will help them to find the right answer.

So if you can't ask “Do you understand?, what can you ask. Let's look at an specific example.

Imagine that you have a class of sixty students that you have divided into ten groups of six. The task you have given them is to plan a birthday party. You have, both as spoken and written instructions, told them that they must decide on a date, a venue, a time, what food and drink to have, what music to play, what other things they will do at the party, who to invite. You have told them that they have 300 RMB to spend but that must buy everything they need including decorations if they want them.

You could then ask a few students “Do you understand?” but a far better strategy is to go quickly to each group and ask a few questions.

“What kind of party is it?”

“What will you have to buy?”

“How much do you have to spend?”

This is checking their understanding and also gives you specific information about any unclear areas. If several groups seem unclear about the same point pause the activity for a moment and explain that point (and only that point) again.

When you are sure the groups are on task walk around a little and listen, helping if you hear something that indicates a lack of understanding but otherwise just listening. When they seem to be almost there go round again with more specific questions.

“Have you decided where it will be? Yes? Where will it be?”

“How many people will you invite? Who will you invite?”

“What food will you have? Really? Do you think you have enough money?”

“What will yo do at the party? Why did you choose that?”

Then leave them to it for a few minutes and when you stop the activity, ask the same kind of questions from the front. Initially ask people who gave you good answers when you were going round because they will then act as models for the others. The spread it out more and ask people you didn't ask before. Get them to stand up and answer.

All tasks, however simple or complex can follow this pattern. Instructions (and perhaps demonstration), concept checking, monitoring, result checking, feedback.

And don't forget to throw in a few “well done” or “good work” comments as you go.

And that's about it and there remains just one more thing to say.

Do you understand?

Buckland Weekly #24: medicine

As always with these posts the contents are solely the view of the author and should not be taken to be officially endorsed in any way by the company..

Medicine

You will get sick. It might be a headache. It might be sickness, diarrhea or constipation. It might be a bad head cold. One way or another you will get sick because everybody, everywhere gets sick sometimes. If you were back home you would get sick sometimes. The difference is that back home you would know exactly what to do about it. You would know what medicines you needed and where to get them. You would know whether you needed to see a doctor and how to do it. You would be able to describe you symptoms and understand the diagnosis and treatment. You would know how sick you had to be to justify phoning your boss to say you were taking the day off. You would know the consequences of taking the day off.

Here you probably won't know any of that.

Now, before I go into anything else about medicine in China let me state my own position up front. I believe in evidence based medicine. I am with Tim Minchin who said, “Do you know what we call alternative medicine that's been proven to work? Medicine.” And with whoever first said, “the plural of anecdote is not data.” However you are free to believe whatever you want to believe. I'm not going to try to convince you because I know from experience that it would be a frustrating and ultimately futile exercise.

The reason that it's important to know where I stand is that, from my point of view, most traditional forms of Chinese medicine are either not proven to work or – worse – proven not to work as soon as they are looked at scientifically. If you are a believer then you will counter with, “If they have been doing it for thousands of years, it must be true.” Our viewpoints are irreconcilable.

So, getting back to the topic at hand, what will you do when you are sick?

The first thing that will happen is that your Chinese friends will start offering all kinds of well-meant advice. It will range from “Your stomach upset is because you drink cold water” to “you were walking around your apartment with no shoes” to “you are sick because eating donkey meat has brought back an old illness”.

They will then want you to undergo acupuncture or cupping or consult a Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioner who will give you bags of leaves and stones to boil into a healing drink. Actually that's only the very traditional practitioners. Modern practitioners working in a traditional way will give you things that look like western pills or medicines but have been prepared from traditional sources. They may look like western medicines but they aren't.

If you wish to follow your friends' advice, go right ahead. Whether they cure you or not they are unlikely to do very much harm and most minor ailments cure themselves anyway. If you have a cough or a cold most western medicines do nothing either beyond making you feel a bit better because you have taken something – anything – that promises to help. For colds and such I just put some honey and lemon into hot water, purely because it helps to soothe a sore throat, not because I think it will cure me. I know that I'll be better in a few days regardless of what I do.

What do you do if you decide that Chinese traditional methods are not for you; that you want the medicines you are familiar with? There is good news and bad news. You are extremely unlikely to find western branded medicines here. If your preferred headache medicine is Tylenol, forget it. Night Nurse for your cold? Sorry. Imodium for... er, well no Imodium either. Unbranded medications on the other hand can be sometimes be obtained. You might not get Advil but you can get Ibuprofen which is the same thing. And if you really need that Tylenol then Paracetamol is the same thing although it's a little harder to find. Western medications for those stomach problems are more difficult and probably only available in big cities so bringing some with you is probably a good idea.

If you want western medicine, when you go to the pharmacy it's as well to take a Chinese friend with you and to look up first the active ingredient name of your medication, then the Chinese for it, on the internet before you go. If you want Chinese medicine still take a friend as they can explain the symptoms.

There is another complication. Drugs which are prescription only in our countries are often available over the counter here but that little leaflet that tells you all the possible side effects is in Chinese. I recommend checking the internet again. When I injured my hip the pharmacy gave my Chinese friend some Diclofenac*. When I looked up the warnings they said that it can cause serious internal bleeding and added “(rarely fatal)”. Call me a wimp if you wish but “rarely fatal” isn't nearly as rare as I'd like. I didn't take it.

OK. Moving on. What about more serious things? What if, as I did, you slip on some ice, crack your patella and break your finger? What if you need to be in hospital for a few days? First of all, don't panic. Chinese hospitals may not always look as shiny and new as western ones but the medical care standards are good. They will almost certainly treat you using western medicines and techniques. However there are a couple of things you should know, just so that they don't come as a surprise. First is that the don't usually administer drugs by injection – it's usually by IV. What would be two seconds at home has you sitting in a chair or lying on a bed for an hour here. It's just the way it's done.

Second, if you need to spend a few days in hospital, they do not provide meals. There is usually somewhere on the premises where food can be bought but that's not much use when you are in plaster ankle to hip. If you want to eat you rely on visitors to bring you food and it can be quite disconcerting (not least to the sense of smell) if you are in a ward with other people to watch them eating all kinds of things while you have no visitors and no food.

And the final thing you should know is that your school is likely to want you back in the classroom and working far quicker than you would be at home. When I had my accident THREE DAYS later the school was providing taxis to and from my apartment, a wheel chair between classrooms and a student as a teaching assistant to write things on the board for me.

You may be wondering about medical insurance. I will post separately about that later.

(*Is it just me or does "Diclofenac" look the name of an alien race in the modern era of Doctor Who? - "They are the most dangerous race in the Universe - the Diclofenac!")

Buckland Weekly #23 : Staying In Touch

Staying In Touch

Once you are here and settled into your new life you will naturally want to stay in touch with folks back home. The question is what's the best way and are there any things you should know?

Skype

Obviously, in the modern world we have services like Skype but sometimes they don't work very well with VPNs and Skype connections between China and the west can be pretty unstable. You will probably want to try them when you want to talk face to face with someone back home but don't count on them. There are also reports on the internet that if you use the Chinese version of Skype it saves the full content of some conversations and makes that available to official censors.

What else can you use?

One of the most common phone apps in China is wechat which is Chinese Instant Messaging service, a bit like a Chinese version of whatsapp. It supports voice and video calls, audio and text messages, groups, money transfer and a lot of other bits and pieces. You can read about it on Wikipedia. The other person does also have to have wechat installed but it's free and (I'm told) works worldwide on most phones. Whatsapp does work at the moment but you can't be sure that it won't be blocked in the future as the Government is constantly changing the list of western sites that are blocked. Most Social Media applications are blocked and why whatsapp remains available is a bit of a mystery.

What about Facebook?

Facbook, like many other pieces of software is blocked by the Chinese Firewall. To access it you must have a VPN which, though technically not allowed, are pretty much universally used over here. If you have a VPN and want to use Facebook to send all your funny stories and photographs to all your friends I suggest that you set up a secret Facebook Group with just you and your family and friends as members. You might wonder why not just a closed group. It's simply that a secret group is much more secure and you can be more confident that if you post something you wouldn't want generally read (comments about your school maybe) then they will only go to the intended audience.

How about email?

How well email works depends on which service you use. Gmail, like anything connected with Google in any way at all is blocked but, like everything else usually works with a VPN. That said, your VPN won't always work. From time to time the Government has a crackdown and aggressively blocks VPN access. Usually the VPN services bypass the new restrictions after a few days but in Febuary and March this year there were over four weeks of blocking because of the Chinese New Year and the Five Year Plan Government meetings in Beijing. If you are relying on the VPN to get you your gmail then, as I discovered, you will be cut off from the world.

There's a way round it. One of the more popular Chinese web services (a bit like a much stripped down Chinese Facebook) is QQ and that has an email service. You can set up a QQ email account and then set your gmail account to forward everything automatically to QQ. That's what I've done now so if my gmail is blocked I can still see my emails there.

Other email services, such as Hotmail, may work in theory but my experience of them is that they are not reliable over here so I'd suggest that whichever email service you use you set up this automatic forwarding to QQ.

What about good old-fashioned letter writing?

It's possible of course but unless you want to pay a lot of money for couriered services whether or not mail ever actually arrives from another country can be a bit hit and miss. Anything at all that is sent to you MUST be sent by a trackable method with a tracking number. I once had a parcel from home which I followed with fascination on the internet as it went to Xi-An, Chengdu, Shanghai and Beijing twice. I didn't live in ANY of those cities. It eventually got to me after spending three days getting from England to China and three weeks getting from Beijing to Baiyin. Sending things out of the country is a bit more reliable but can be expensive if you want a quick and guaranteed delivery.

(A small note for UK teachers only. If you have to send anything to UK Government Departments – such as the Inland Revenue – you have a small problem. You have to use a courier service to guarantee it gets there but courier services won't deliver to PO Box numbers. The Inland Revenue only has a PO Box address. I had to send the letter to my brother and have him put it into a new envelope and post it in England.)

*

A list of currently blocked websites can be found at

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Websites_blocked_in_mainland_China

Buckland Weekly #22 - How To Avoid Getting Into Trouble

As always these notes are based on my own experience of China and should not be taken as an official statement of Buckland's position.

Not Getting Into Trouble

Mostly staying out of trouble is just a matter of using some common sense, but in this document, just to be sure, I'll mention a few things that could potentially lead to difficulties. If it all seems a bit obvious, that's good because it means that you already have the right idea. You would be surprised at how often people come with the wrong idea.

Visitors on Campus

Your apartment may be on campus. This is quite common and it has some advantages and some disadvantages. One of the disadvantages is a lack of privacy. If you have come to China as a couple then you will be sharing an apartment but should still be aware that students are always about - behave accordingly. It's very different if you are here alone. You may well form a relationship while you are here. It happens. You must be discrete. Remember that visitors to apartments on campus, even just having a friend over for coffee, ought to be cleared with the school first. As with any country, schools don't like strangers wandering about. Having someone stay overnight may not be allowed at all so check out with other teachers what the rules are and follow them. Just remember that it's all about the safety and the security of the students. The plus side is that it also gives you safety and security.

PDA

Some places, like Yangshuo, are a little more relaxed and western than others because of the number of foreigners but away from those places, in cities with fewer visitors, you may well notice that public displays of affection are rarely seen. This is cultural and should be respected and copied. Hugging and kissing, even holding hands, isn't commonly seen. It isn't likely that anyone will actually say anything but it might get people looking at you.

Inappropriate Dress

How you dress in the classroom is quite important. The simplest advice is to start out in your most formal clothes for the first week and look at how the other teachers there dress. From the second week you can adopt the same dress style that they do. Remember that it's easy to go to a less formal dress code from a more formal one but hard the other way. If you go in to school in jeans and a T-shirt in the first week but find that every other teacher is in a suit, then you have already made a bad impression that will be difficult to recover.

Generally schools expect you to dress smartly and professionally. You don't usually need to be very formal but proper trousers and a good shirt give a good impression.

It is possible, though not likely, that some schools will have specific dress codes or even ask teachers to wear a provided uniform. (I have only once come across this.) There isn't a lot you can do about this except follow their regulations. They may be prepared to make an exception for you, but they may not.

Drunkenness or Drugs

These are two very big issues that will cause problems. No one will mind you going out and having a drink outside school hours. China has a very social culture and you will probably be invited to eat and drink with other teachers. You will also want to go out with your friends. However, it's important to never turn up drunk or hung-over to class. This should be obvious but when you are out of your own culture it's easy to get caught up in the moment and drink too much. Most of us have done it. Just be careful when you have school tomorrow.

As for drugs, all I can say is “don't.” At best it would get you into trouble with the school and depending on the situation it could get you thrown out of China or even into jail. The Chinese authorities have very strict laws about drugs.

Smoking

It's less of a problem now than it once was but there is something of a double standard when it comes to smoking in public. As with the PDAs, you shouldn't judge by what you see in Yangshuo because it isn't typical. Typically, elsewhere, you will see that men smoke at anytime and anywhere but you won't often see women smoking in public. Nowadays, among younger adults, in bars or coffee shops, you will see it but in public buildings or in the street, it is rare. It won't cause any problems but it is against the social norm. Smoking is allowed in most places and I sometimes see male teachers smoking in school offices but I have literally never seen a woman teacher smoking at school.

Lateness

The school expects you to be in class before the start of each lesson. If you live on campus this isn't a problem as the time from your apartment to the classroom is a couple of minutes. However one of the disadvantages of living off campus is that you could be quite a distance from the school. I was a forty minute bus ride from one of my schools. You are still expected to be on time. Clearly there might be something unexpected that delays you and you should inform the school by phone if that happens but if you are regularly late, even by a couple of minutes, then you will get in trouble.

Inappropriate classroom behaviour

China doesn't have the strict regulations that England or America have regarding teacher student interactions. (Remember in England a teacher cannot give a student a pat on the back for work well done or even be alone in a classroom with a student. Touching a student in any way at all is only allowed in order to prevent immediate physical danger – for example if he is about to fall from a window. America has, I believe, similar laws.) It's not as strict here but it's better to act as if it were.

It's hard to pin down exactly what kind of classroom behaviour is inappropriate. As a general rule of thumb work on the principle that if it would get you in trouble at home, it could get you in trouble here, and always try to behave as professionally as you can.

Lack of Preparation

The school can ask to see your lesson plans. If your lessons are going well and everything is fine they probably won't but if you are struggling or they feel your classes are not up to standard, they might. If you can't show them a lesson plan they will, possibly rightly, assume that it's because you didn't make one. If you have been a teacher before, or have been working here for some time, you may well be able to walk into a classroom with your plan just in your head and teach a great lesson. I have a number of lessons that I have taught so often I could do them without a moment's thought before the lesson begins. I still print them out and take them to school with me. There is always the chance that someone will want to see them. 

Also keep them filed. They might ask to see the ones for lessons that have already been done. Again they probably won't but they might.

Unless you do already have a lot of experience, don't try to teach without preparing. There will be more about how to prepare and the documents you need during orientation but at the absolute minimum you should write out a running order for your lesson and details of any tasks or activities that you want to use.

Bad Language or Rudeness

We all have bad days but in China, even more than at home, it's important to maintain your politeness when dealing with others, no matter how frustrating you find it. Losing your temper and swearing or being rude, even shouting or just raising your voice, causes a loss of face both for you and for the person you are dealing with. You may feel that your voice isn't being heard, that no one is understanding your point. It may even be true. There are often cross-cultural misunderstandings. However, you need to just keep on trying to explain your point of view calmly.

As I said at the start, most of this should be obvious and it can all be summed up as being professional in your attitude and behaviour. We have a saying in England for telling someone things they already know. We say (and I have no idea why) that it is “teaching your grandmother to suck eggs”. Apologies if this has sounded like that, but all these things do occasionally bear repeating.