Exchange Teaching Methods with Oliver and Andrew

Written by Premier Wang, No. 2 Middle School, Pingliang

Teaching English, especially oral English in a big class of more than 60 students, has long been a great challenge to teachers of English in China. As I predicted, Oliver and Andrew have also met with such a challenge. Although many academic essays have been published in newspapers and magazines and numerous heated discussions have been carried out in the English teaching field, exploring the large class problem, it seems that there is no agreement on the "one best way" of teaching a large class. In this context we have to accept the challenge and find a 'way' by our own experience. As the proverb goes, "the more solutions, the fewer problems."

I could not agree more with Oliver's idea which he mentioned the other day. He decided to divide his big class into small groups, which I think" hits the nail on the head". Here I would like to explain the specific procedures in detail. It is often suggested that the whole class be divided into four or five groups of about 15 students and each of them include a group leader, a secretary and a reporter. The teacher can appoint the leader or the students can elect their leaders according to their performance. For the sake of convenience and efficiency, each student can be given a number because it is no easy job to remember every student's Chinese name. Therefore the teachers will have to take turns organizing and teaching each group which will call for time and patience.

Oliver was aware from previous experience that a class can become tired of oral practice and that it is a challenge to maintain the enthusiasm. In this situation, I would like to suggest a balanced activity method or four-skill activity method which means that the whole class should consist of listening、speaking、reading and writing activities so that the students' four skills could be improved simultaneously.

In order to make sure that the speaking activity can go smoothly, the teacher can ask the students to listen to a presentation on various topics and they can feedback to the class. In the same way, the students should be asked to read something, e g, a news story, and do a writing exercise based on what they have read. People often call listening and reading activities "language input" and speaking and writing activities "language output". As we know, if there is no input, there will be no output. Therefore we should always present "input" in the first place.

The key to the four-skill activity method is that the teacher should try his best to stimulate the students to prepare their speaking and writing tasks in advance. At first teachers will encourage students to write short sentences, then a short paragraph and finally a story .In this way the students can make progress in their writing step by step.

It is often the case that a number of students are not interested in, or not good at speaking due to their poor foundation, or are not brave enough to open their mouths due to lack of self-confidence. The teacher should spare no effort to encourage them to take an active part in speaking out loud.

If the students can not manage to speak, the teacher can allow them to write down what they want to say, and then read it to the class. Simple sentences will be appreciated for this exercise. As experience tells us, students are sure to succeed in speaking fluently and naturally without referring to notes sooner or later.

It can be inferred that discussions about the customs, culture and civilization of the UK will come into our classroom via Andrew and Oliver in the coming lessons. The reason is that to some extent background knowledge is more important than language itself for a lack of it can often cause misunderstandings.

What is more, a brief introduction to British history, geography, literature, society and education system etc,can not only promote the students' language learning but broaden their horizons as well. It may even arouse their desire to go and study in the UK. (I notice that Andrew and Oliver have been doing this job more or less but we need some more!).

I suggest that on purpose Andrew and Oliver mention such great names as Bacon, Shakespeare, Dickens, Darwin, Newton, Churchill, Queen Elizabeth, Oxford and Cambridge Universities that British people can take pride in. Thus on the one hand the students can benefit from British culture and on the other hand they can enhance their language proficiency together .It can be said that the students can learn the language through learning history and the history by improving their language, "killing two birds with one stone".

It may also be a good idea to talk about British food and table manners with the aid of such key words as stew, pudding and sandwich. It is a great pity that we often hear of pounds or Euros but we have never seen one. So it is a good topic to talk about British currency and show the students some Euros or pounds. Now I am sure that Oliver and Andrew realized how thirsty we are for knowing more about their country, their people as well as their language and what a long way they have to go.

It is hoped that this article of mine can serve as a trigger to start heated discussions about related topics among my British and Chinese colleagues.