Teaching kids in China (1)

Teaching kids in China (1)
DaqingDevil Jun 26, 2013 17:22

The end of the Spring term is almost here with my smaller children classes winding up this week. They call them Shentong classes which are basic English lessons aimed at 4 – 6 year olds who have as yet to enter primary school. These kids all go to the local kindergartens and there are government kindergartens and there are private kindergartens. Considering education is free I wonder why you would send your kid to a private kindergarten? Silly question – I know the answer to that having witnessed some pretty brutal behavior by teachers towards the little kids in the public system. Parents are obviously aware of the difference and are prepared to pay for better care for their kids.

 

One of the real problems teaching kids this age is capturing the short attention span they possess particularly the mid week evening classes where they have been at their own school all day and the parents subject them to a one and a half hour English class two nights a week! Insane. The foreign teacher does half an hour and the Chinese assistant the other 1 hour. Hats off to the assistants! Breaks of 10 minutes are taken after each half hour. The antics of the parent or grandparent during that break is a show in itself as they force food and drink down the kid’s throat in a 10 minute feeding frenzy and during which the child can continue playing with friends or misbehaving while using his or her hands because the food and drink is being held in place by the aforesaid guardian! Look mum, no hands!

 

The food the kids are being fed is also questionable and apart from those lucky enough, or unlucky depending on their tastes, to be given fresh, sliced fruit the others are given packaged sausage, chocolate biscuits, Chinese cookies (and yes I have to differentiate between my idea of a cookie and a Chinese version as the local product is terrible), potato crisps, lollipops and other candy. A highly strung little emperor in one of my older classes gets his mother to bring him a hamburger from McDonald’s. You say no big deal but there is no McDonald’s in our town so she has to take a taxi (16RMB) to the next suburb, buy the burger and return (16RMB) so this little guy can enjoy his 10 minute break!

 

I actually love the little kids, well most of them, and they certainly love me and this (probably) misdirected adoration sometimes translates into them offering me, in grubby little hands, shares in their meal which I am obliged to accept even though I point out that I would rather pick my own crisp or a biscuit or whatever from the packet. Some stuff they offer I just won’t eat and tell them I am putting the item into my bag to eat later.

 

For those of you who think a half hour with a foreign teacher 2 nights a week makes no difference because the kids are taught basic English in the kindergartens by Chinese English teachers let me point this out. I teach at the local public kindergartens as well and in my classes (I do 6 in a morning) I have students that I teach privately and the rest are in the public system. The difference between their levels of English, pronunciation and word / picture association, is significant. The lesson material I am given to teach also needs correcting at times, which I do, and inform the assistant they allocate me that what they have been teaching the kids is grammatically incorrect. Sigh!!!!

 

Our private school runs 3 levels of Shentong and some of my students I have now been teaching since they were 4 or 5 and for over a year and half. I started last year developing a different way to present the half hour lessons because, quite frankly, the games were getting tiring and a little boring regardless of the energy input by me and even the creation of new games. Holding that little kid attention span was becoming a major challenge. Over last autumn and this spring semesters I put together exciting Power Point lessons that included video clips, children’s songs, cartoons and whatever else I could find that was relevant to the subject matter of that lesson. Most of the time it took me up to 2 hours to create a 30 minute lesson and sometimes even longer. The lessons are still interactive in that you have to be involved in presenting the songs, the words and the sentences and I still play games and use my guitar but at least I leave every class knowing that the kids had a blast of a time and actually learnt and retained something.

Tags:Teaching & Learning Language & Culture

2 Comments

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honky

Very informative and interesting article. Thank you, Sir.

Jun 28, 2013 15:56 Report Abuse

CARLGODWIN1983

Very good article, Daqing. One of the better ones I have read. A lot of people, including parents and school senior staff don't appreciate or recognise the amount of time needed to put together a class like the one you have explained. What's more, to then use the class in a public school is not so bad, but, when you have the same class like I do all day everyday, it is a serious amount of work and preperation that's needed. It's why, when schools like mine don't want to reward us for the amount of work we put in, I don't want to work for them. I also recognise and empathise about the differences between students who go to private classes and those who don't. I will spend the summer preparing my classes for next year. Good read.

Jun 27, 2013 10:24 Report Abuse