(Warning! This post could be dangerously boring for non-analytical readers!)
As I prepare for another two solid days of teaching, here are a few thoughts about my classes and students. I have two different sections of students meeting on separate days, about 50 in each group. Each day (Monday and Tuesday), I teach two Negotiating classes in the morning and two International Marketing classes in the afternoon. The Tuesday classes get the benefit of my learnings from Monday. Here is a photo of each class (the back of Tuesday and the front of Monday):
The kids are a pleasure to work with, very respectful and give the appearance of understanding (even when they are clueless). As with most Chinese classes, they have an amazing ability to repeat things in unison. Since many of them struggle with English, we always spend the first half of the first class reviewing the vocabulary words that will appear in the actual subject lesson. It’s interesting to hear their loud and clear annunciation as they repeat the words after me. (Click Here for Student Responses)
As I mentioned in a previous post, the university attempted to divide their International Trade students based on English competence, giving me the students with the best English and placing the others in a Chinese version of the same subjects. Unfortunately, they used a national business English test (known as the CET4) as the basis for this sorting process. The chart below shows that they were indeed successful in selecting the top half of the distribution for my class:
Unfortunately, there is almost no correlation between the student CET4 scores and their oral English capability (as measured by an English teacher):
This fact has been borne out in the students’ tests and class participation. I suppose that this is every teacher’s challenge: to help the best students develop to their full potential, to challenge those in the middle, and to avoid losing the ones at the bottom. With that in mind, I always take an anonymous poll at the end of each class to test for comprehension. This is my way of checking if any changes in class structure and activities are moving in the right direction. Based on this chart, we’re making some progress:
While this poll helps give a macro trend for adjusting my teaching approaches, the real improvement (I hope) should come next week. Tomorrow, I will finally be taking delivery of a portable “Classroom Response System” from the eInstruction company (after disqualifying a local company that suggested we avoid taxes by a direct cash payment). This system provides a remote control “clicker” to each student, allowing me to collect real time samples of comprehension, repeating a topic if necessary to be sure we get it right. The system also enables live testing with instant results since each clicker has a unique student ID code, saving a lot of time grading tests and reducing the level of cheating. More to come later on the effectiveness of this system.
So how are you enjoying teaching? Many of us always thought this was a natural fit for you – so is it? Have you done an analysis of whether the males or females have a better grasp of English – I saw in one photo more female students.
The University of Delaware uses a classroom response system. We got to try it when we went for orientation.
I think the clicker system tied to their Student ID’s is a terrific way for you to get instant feedback and to give short quizzes from the projection screen. Teachers in the middle school where I worked in Kansas were utilizing them in their lessons and the clickers have lots of neat applications, especially for special education students.
Great post! Love the data… I’m definitely interested to hear if the “clicker” measure of English comprehension matches your informal poll. Have you given any written quizzes yet?
It might be nice to establish a baseline early-on to compare to an end-of-year assessment to see if there was measurable progress throughout the year. You could give one quiz for concepts (translated into Chinese) and one quiz for business English comprehension.
I think about you both often and your work there. As I read this post, I also thought of a document which I was involved in developing in 1986-87. http://www.nbpts.org/UserFiles/File/what_teachers.pdf
Your post reads as if you are enhancing student learning! Congratulations!