A few weeks ago I finished my first academic year of teaching Oral English at a university in the Middle Kingdom. There've been ups and downs, yadda, yadda, but it's been, overall, good. Even the work has been okay. Here's a short piece I wrote back in March about my favourite lesson.
This week, in the often frustrating battle to make my students speak English, I’ve been doing a speed dating exercise with my class…
I'm a week away from finishing my first academic year as what can loosely be described as a university teacher in China. Someone told me that I should write some kind of retrospective/memoir, but that sounded like far too much work. I mean, I'm on holiday in a week. I've begun the wind-down and I'm feeling far too lazy for any actual writing. So, in lieu of me working, here are a few of my students' odd comments and …
I've given some thought to doing an MA in TESOL. After all, I taught it in China, liked it, so why not earn 5,000 RMB a month instead of a mere 4800?
All I need is a golden ticket.
Luckily, I found one, via a Google ad on a message board. Upon seeing the heading, Master's in TESOL, I immediately clicked through to find a big banner full of jolly students on a pristine campus that has clearly gone beyond the cal…
I've taught English to two-year-olds in split bottom pants. The trick there is not letting them sit on your lap for storytime.
I've taught English to bartenders and asked them to repeat after me. Bud...Wise...Er...
I've taught businessmen and doctors, flight attendants and fry cooks.
I've taught Little Emperors in large classes, I've taught university students and training school students and done English Co…
Keith, already suspicious of John, is doubly suspicious now that John missed their dinner appointment. On a rainy Friday, he wonders about John's motives for being in China, as he implements a fresh idea into the classroom: a poetry exercise, where the students go outside, and use English to write a poem about what they see.
Keith started class. He did Tongue Twisters. He had arranged them in such a manner tha…
Be sure to start at the beginning with "The 7-Year Laowai: Part 1 – Introduction", or see all posts in the series here.
After Tom, that was it for me. I decided not to "renew the contract". I applied for math-teaching jobs at international schools in many different cities, but come September, I was across Wuhan. In another university.
Teaching oral English.
I never cut down on my drinking. In this place, h…
Be sure to start at the beginning with "The 7-Year Laowai: Part 1 – Introduction", or see all posts in the series here.
With Matt gone, nobody really did anything. They bitched. We all avoided Keith like the walking kindergarten plague he was...but none of us did anything. I won't say that I tried but had no support, but really, what were we to do? We were English teachers in China, lucky enough to have these jobs…
Be sure to start at the beginning with "The 7-Year Laowai: Part 1 – Introduction", or see all posts in the series here.
Paul left in June, and that August brought us Keith. Within a year he had transformed our university into his own private playhouse.
Keith was at first unassuming. From somewhere in the Midwest, he said he had done career counseling, and after an early retirement, had decided to come see China…
Be sure to start at the beginning with "The 7-Year Laowai: Part 1 – Introduction", or see all posts in the series here.
A foreign affairs officer once said that to renew the contract "the teaching must be really excellent".
If they wish to sing that particular song, then I'll let them, as long as we understand something: your position here is not based on teaching ability, hiring you wasn't based on it, and th…
As an English teacher at a 6,000-strong middle school in the northwest of Hunan province, I come into contact with several hundred students a day. My course load puts me in front of roughly 850 students a week. In a school as cramped as mine, the students and staff are constantly breathing each other's germs. As such, when I started to get a deep-lung cough and run a mild fever, I should have known it was only a m…
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