Teaching English in China： first week of teaching

I teach classes of 60 students. They sit around desks which are cluttered with text books and their bags. Some students bring a pen and notepad the majority does not. This means when I set them a task you see one person writing with ten people crowded round. When it is time to share the conversation to the class the same answer is repeated over and over.

The topic I taught this week was British and American English. I was surprised by this choice of topic because the students I teach are mainly beginners to lower intermediate. (There are a couple of classes, which are upper intermediate)  I had always been told that it was based when learning English to stick to one version until you could speak well.

Although teaching the difference between British and American English can be difficult considering that I use a lot of American English all the time.

The first thing I did was give an introduction of myself and family. I gave a short summary of facts about England and my home town. Then I showed them pictures from my photo album，which the students really enjoyed doing。

Then I gave a short explanation why British and American English was different. My explanation was that Americans wanted a separate culture from ours, which lead them simplify and add some words. Some of the classes needed my assistant to translate for them in order to understand my explanation。

The next stage was to demonstrate the main two differences，which are spelling and vocabulary。I gave a few examples of words that are spelt differently in American e.g. color。The student found this part of the lesson easy to understand。This is because in their other lessons writing ，reading and grammar are main focuses.

Then I moved on to showing them vocabulary I did this by having a table with two columns English and American、 I left gaps in the table and would ask them what the word was in English or American e.g. what is the American word for trousers.

My assistant checked to see if they understand the words by asking them in Chinese. This to me was off putting because students started to answer me in Chinese all the time. So I repeatedly ask them to answer in English.

Then I got them to repeat the words about me in order to teach them pronunciation. The most difficult word the found to pronounce was trousers so I broke it up tr/ou/s/er/s. The other words they found difficult were gas, petrol, vacation.

Once the students had to learn the vocabulary I showed them example sentences in British English on the board。Then I told them to work in pairs to practice speaking the examples sentences in American。Then I asked for some volunteers。No one volunteered so I would pick students who I knew had done the work。（Many of them didn’t bother or slept）