Designing Tasks for a TBL style lesson

Designing Tasks For use with a Task-Based learning Approach

Before you can begin to design tasks to use with TBL you must understand exactly what it is and what it is trying to achieve. The best way to begin an explanation of that is by saying what it isn’t trying to achieve. Unlike the “Presentation- Practice- Production” (PPP) model of language teaching a task in TBL isn’t specifically trying to introduce any one item of grammar to a class. Instead it is giving students a chance to use and build on the structures they know and to develop their fluency in expressing their ideas in English. The point of TBL is to get them talking naturally about a topic and exploring the ways that they can do this.

You might be thinking that if this is the approach then how do they ever learn anything new, anything they don’t already know. There are two answers to this question. The first is that thy learn from each other. Not all students know exactly the same things so that they will, by performing a task in a group, expand each others English.

The second answer is that when using a TBL structure in a lesson, the task isn’t the ONLY thing that is done. There should be a pre-task phase where the teacher introduces the topic, gives relevant vocabulary and structures.

This does not need to be as explicit as standing at the front and describing them. In fact I almost never do that. It’s far better to introduce them naturally by using them yourself. When the students have completed the task there is always a feedback phase where the students demonstrate what they have done and where the teacher can go through any points of language that have come up in the lesson - vocabulary, grammar, style etc.

So, how do we design a task?

There are a number of vital elements to be taken into account when designing a task.

It must

have a point and completion criteria

have clear instructions or demonstration

involve all the students

be relevant to their study and appropriate for their age and level

not be either too complicated OR too simple

not be too vague

actually be “doable”

have a set time for completion

have a built in review phase so that students can share their answers

Have a point and completion criteria

The first, and most important, element is that a task must have a point and completion criteria. The students must know what they are aiming for and, crucially, how they will know when they have completed the task. Tasks that are too vague or too open ended won’t benefit the students and might well fail altogether.

Example

In a lesson that is about shopping for clothes.

Bad: Just asking the students to roll play a dialogue about buying and selling clothes.

Good: First, get the groups to choose two students to be shopkeepers. The others will be customers. Then give each shopkeeper the same list of items they sell. The shopkeepers must decide on a price for each item. While they do that give the customers a list showing what they want to buy and how much in total they have to spend. These lists can be different for each customer. They must decide how much they want to spend on each item.

When the shopkeepers and customers have prepared tell them that the shopkeepers objective is to make as much money and as many sales as possible and the customers objective is to buy everything for as low a price as possible. Everyone should keep a record of what they have bought or sold and how much it cost.

Demonstrate both rolls in short sample dialogues with students.

Set a time limit.

This task has a point - different for the two different rolls but that doesn’t matter - and they will know when they have finished because all of the customers will have bought everything or run out of money.

Have clear instructions or demonstration

It’s important that they task is described clearly/ Exactly how you describe it will, of course, depend on the class. There are some general principles though.

You should always use language of the lowest level you can to describe the task to the students. They may be capable of understanding higher level instructions but they may not. As it is crucial that they understand what to do it is better to keep the instructions as simple as possible.

Plan, before the lesson, how you will give verbal instructions and written instructions. Think about exactly what you will write on the board and exactly what you will say. The task may be clear in your mind but just trying to describe it to the class without planning might not make it clear to the students.

When you have planned it, leave it for a while, then come back to it and read it through and simplify it as much as possible.

Write the instructions in simple, clear, command language.

Don’t write, “I would like you to discuss which animals you would like to keep as pets at home and consider the problems you might have with them.”. Write. “Which animals you would like as pets. What problems would you have with them? Ask the others in your group.”

Also remember that demonstration is better than explanation. It isn’t always possible to demonstrate a complete activity but where you can - using a student to help, if necessary - show the students how to do the task rather than just writing it on the board.

Involve all the students

One thing that commonly goes wrong with activities is that you set up the task, give the instructions, hand out any materials they need and immediately one student starts doing it while the rest of the group start chatting in their native language about television or music or boy and girlfriends and not participating at all. It’s better, where possible, to design tasks that need input from everybody or where everybody can contribute their ideas. If the task is one that could be done by one student you can allocate a student in each group as the leader and give that student additional instructions to ask everyone in the group for their ideas. The best tasks need everyone to participate to be completed. Information gap tasks are always good and can be done at all ages and levels.

Example

In junior classes I often use the well known diary task where each student has been given a different partially completed diary for a week of activities and they must ask each other questions such as “what are you doing on Monday evening”. The objective is for them, without showing their papers to anyone else, to find a day and time when they are all free to go swimming together.

A more complex task for older students is “gatecrasher” where all the students have a card giving information about the character they are playing but one student has the “gatecrasher” card. They are told that they have all met at a party and must ask each other questions to decide who the gatecrasher is. If they have a character card they must use it to answer. the gatecrasher is free to say anything.

Be relevant to study, age and level

I used to teach adult refugees who had come to live in England. My tasks would often involve such things as how to deal with solicitors, how to register with a doctor or where to community centres that had translation or interpreting services. Now I teach teenagers in state schools in China. Those tasks would be boring and pointless as they are things that none of them is ever likely to need to do.

Teenagers the world over are far more likely to be engaged by lessons about sport, music or movies. Older students may be interested in ecology or wildlife preservation or history. You need to judge the interest of your classes carefully. They are far more likely to do a task that interest then than one they find boring and irrelevant.

Also, if you are teaching in a state school, they will probably have another English teacher who has a particular text book that they use. You don’t need to use the same book but it’s a good idea to take a look at the topics they have done recently and use similar themes. This will make your lessons more relevant to their studies and give a stronger consistency.

Not be too complicated or too simple

Judging the level, especially in large mixed-ability classes, can be very tricky but things will go a lot better if you can get it right. The most important thing to remember is that a task that is too simple is as bad as a task that is too difficult. If the first group has finished before you have got half way round the room monitoring the others then they will naturally find other things to do - such as their maths homework or reading the latest Basketball magazine. Recovering in a class where half the students have stopped listening can be a tough job. One way round this is to try to create tasks that have multiple objectives that build on the ones already achieved or to design a second phase to a task to extend it so that students who work at it more slowly need only complete the first part while faster students can work on the second part.

Example

In the simple diary task described above you can easily add a number of extensions. Once the students have found the day when they can all go swimming you can ask them to find another day when they are already doing the same thing (with or without specifying what it is.) Or you can ask them to find a day when all but one of them are free to go to the park and then reschedule the missing person’s diary so that he or she can take part.

Not too vague

We have really already dealt with this in the section on having a point and a completion. A task that is vaguely defined will result in students not knowing where to begin.

“Discuss your favourite TV programs.” is too vague.

“Make a list of everyone in your groups favourite TV programs and for each one find out what it is about, when it is on and why they like it.” is better.

Even better would be too put a series of questions relating to TV on the board and then give your own answers before getting each group to conduct a survey and record the results, with each group feeding back at the end of the task.

Be “doable”

This should be obvious but you will find that it isn’t. When you have devised a task leave it for a while and then try to do it yourself. Better still, get someone else to try it out. If the task can’t be done then it is useless. For example if you give students a letter of the alphabet and ask them to list in thirty seconds as many countries as they can beginning with that letter,then it’s no good giving X because there aren’t any.

This is a particular problem with logic puzzle style activities. If you are going to give a puzzle to be solved then make sure it has a solution.

Also, make sure you know the solution (and how to obtain it) so that you can explain it clearly.

Timing and Review

When you set a time limit make sure it is realistic. Remember that a task that you can complete in a minute will take much longer for your students. Don’t be afraid to allow extra time if nobody is getting close to finishing as your time limit runs out.

Allow plenty of time for a review and feedback phase at the end of a task. If you have ten groups who need to feed back that’s a good chunk of a forty-five minute lesson gone. I get around this by monitoring closely during the task and making a note of anything that I think will need to be reinforced at the end. Then rather than getting feedback from every group, I get feedback from the groups that have completed the task but have raised some interesting points as they were doing it.

Buckland Weekly #34 - Class Sizes

When you come to China - even if you are an experienced teacher at home - there is one key difference that you can’t fail to be shocked by - class sizes. I taught at a college in England for over ten years and my largest class was about twenty students. In my six years in China my smallest class has been double that and my largest regular class was eighty four students. I’ve averaged about sixty.

It can be quite a daunting prospect. When you first walk into a small classroom packed to overflowing with eager Chinese teachers your first instinct might well be to turn around and go home to a country where classes have a sensible number of students.

Don’t panic. There are ways to manage large classes and once you get the hang of it, it isn’t really any more difficult than smaller groups.

The first thing to realise is that many of the typical EFL activities you may have learned if you have done a CELTA or a TESOL course simply can’t be done as they are usually done and if you attempt them they will be a disaster. The kind of thing I am talking about is any activity that involves the students getting up and moving about or involves you, the teacher, rearranging the classroom layout. Try it if you like but I’m confident that chaos will ensue.

For example, one typical activity in an EFL classroom is “Find someone who…” where each student has a list of activities and must find students who can do each one by walking around and talking to classmates. With so many students and so little space there is no way at all that this could work. In a way, being an experienced teacher with a wide repertoire of activities will work against you as you need to drastically rethink what is possible and how to organise things.

So what can you do?

The main thing is to work in groups. Groups of four or six are best because fewer restricts the scope of activities available to you and more makes it impractical for all the students to talk to each other.

When you try to set up your groups you hit another snag. Conventional wisdom says one of two things. Either you group students of a similar level together to promote maximum interaction or you mix the levels so that the stronger students can have a chance to help the weaker ones. Either way you are supposed to vary the groups frequently so that they aren’t always working with the same people.

That just isn’t possible when you can’t move students around. You can only group students with the others sitting near to them but the good news is that it takes seconds to walk around the class indicating who you want to to work together with a group number and a wave of the arms.

Let’s take a look at why this is such a good idea.

Now that the students are in groups you can teach the class as if each group is a student. What was an unmanageable eighty students has been reduced to a far easier twenty groups. How does this help?

Let’s think of some advantages.

1. Where a single student might be reluctant to answer a question because he doesn’t want to be wrong and lose face, a group is more likely to answer because its a consensus process where no one loses face.

2. Activities such as “find someone who…” can be reduced to “find someone in your group who…”.

3. Discussion activities are easy to organise because discussion can now take place in a group.

4. When walking around monitoring you can talk to a whole group at once instead of trying to talk to every individual.

5. You can choose a leader in each group and have them ensure that everyone is participating.

6. Students who haven’t understood the task can ask the others in their group for help in what they must do. (I allow them to help each other to understand the tasks in Chinese though the tasks themselves must be done in English.)

7. Feedback at the end of the tasks is far quicker and classroom management in general is easier.

8. If you need handouts you can make one copy per group for your largest class and then collect them and reuse them every time. Making one copy per student would mean carrying a pile of papers six inches thick and, as you might have to spend your own money on producing them, cost a small fortune.

Will this solve all the problems of a large class? No. Of course not. There will always be students in a class who won’t participate whatever you do. (I have a student in one class who has literally (and I mean that literally) slept through every minute of every lesson. As he wears a hoodie pulled over his head I have never actually seen his face. I have been told by the other teachers to just let him as he sleeps through every minute of every class.)

What it will do though is encourage the students to interact with each other in English and greatly simplify your job in the classroom. 

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 #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!")