Hiii! Wedding and LA were good...lots of fun and now...I'm back in Leeds... the weather was decent when I first came back BUT now it is raining and miserable again! My Sri Lankan/Los Angeles blood doesn't cope so well.

So you're half-way through! Yayy! Is the weather better? How's your mom btw, is she still going to Mexico? Hope you're enjoying yourself :)

Hi! How's it going? I've just come back from my trip to LA (remember I told you I went home for my sister's wedding?). How is everything with you?

Hey there,

My name is Emma and I work on the i-to-i team as an Online tutor.  The China Internship team are constantly trying to improve the intern experience and have asked me to create some new materials to aid new teachers in their first few weeks. So I thought who better to ask than the interns themselves!!!  So, in terms of teaching, my questions to you are:

What would you have liked more help on and what have you struggled the most with in your lessons? 
How do you find teaching Chinese students?
What activities do you find work well with your students?

Any feedback, good or bad would be much appreciated.  If you didn't feel comfortable and felt stressed here is your chance to let us know and you will be helping future interns.

Please follow this link to leave your much appreciated feedback:  http://www.tefl-chalkboard.com/groups/3-Teach-in-China-Internship/discussion/249-calling-all-china-interns

Thanks,

Emma

hello, how are you?? I've no credit left on my phone, so unable to contact you!! :( hope you had a good day...and hope to see you soon!

Yeah everything we've sort of learnt has kinda gone out the window for these type of lessons. Today was better in a couple of the lessons, where i felt like i was actually achieving something but most of the time i dont feel like that as the kids don't seem to want to learn. The other teachers just sit down and talk, seriously. No writing on the board, no handouts, no pair work.

How have your other classes been?

I still feel really quite bored here, fed up of sitting in an office!

Most interesting plans i have tonight is probably popping on a film and sitting on internet, which is what i do at home anyway, not what i expected to do in China!

Have you found anyone else there? Is it beautiful where you are? I would really love some scenery, all i get is smog, hehe.

Hope everything is ok xx

Glad to hear it Katy! Keep me posted on how all your lessons go - I'm sure you'll be great.

Yes I am back in good old Leeds now! How's the teaching going? Getting the hang of it yet? How about your mom? I know she'a already a teacher anyway, so how is she finding the whole experience?

I got really sick my last few days in Beijing so I didn't get to do a lot with it unfortunately. I survived my long journey home and my boyfriend had bought all these snacks (comfort food) for me... sooo getting settled back in :) Keep me posted please!

Haha same! I can't believe that ttc/i-to-i seem to have mucked this up so badly for some people.

I am a speaking assistance at this school. So my classes have between 3-4 teachers in them, we split the class into groups and we sit down and just make conversation with these students for an hour. I've found it pretty hard and very boring! This is what all my lessons are going to be like, and i don't know how to a lesson plan for that because you can't hold one topic for long. So i'm spending a lot of the time in the office twiddling my thumbs! Would love to hear how your conversational classes go? I tried googling ideas but they all involve worksheets and have the class move around and talk to each other but that isn't what happens here. How much can you talk about with the same group of students 3 times a week?

I actually want to teach grammar now lol, something with more structure and something more interesting! xx

As far as them not understanding what you're saying goes it's just a case of speaking really slowly and clearly - and also making sure they've got the instructions for the exercise written down. Often students' ability to read English is leap years ahead of their listening and speaking skills.

There's quite a few lesson ideas here: http://www.onlinetefl.com/tefl-lesson-plans/index.html and here: http://www.tefl-chalkboard.com/groups/59-Teaching-ideas-materials that might help too. You should also chat to Emma, who's a much more experienced teacher than me to get her advice: http://www.tefl-chalkboard.com/emmafoers

Hope that all helps - keep me posted with how it all goes!

Hey Katy,

I feel for you - I remember what having 50 students in a class was like - chaos! Are you teaching on your own or are you an assistant for these classes? It's really tricky in China as I found no one wanted to speak in front of the class, so you have to get them talking to one another instead. My advice would be to get together lots of relatively short role plays that they can do with one another. Focus on topics you would talk about in real life, like music, movies, friends, family, school etc. There's some good activities on this site: http://www.eslbase.com/worksheets.asp (don't worry about all the grammar terminology - they're all quite fun really!) There's also some good 'find someone who' activities on there which work quite well as it gets them up and moving around.

One difficulty is working out whether they've actually done the exercise and the danger of them being tempted to speak Chinese. Listen in and be really strict with it if you think people are 'cheating'. You might want to have worksheets where they write down specific bits of information they need to find out by talking to their partners. You can then collect these up at the end. You don't necessarily have to look at them again, but it scares them into thinking you're checking up on them!