This week on High School Musical 8: Teaching English in China...
5 Comments
The South Campus Library Huanghe Science & Technology College, or "HuangKeDa" as it is usually known, is a large, private university in Zhengzhou, Henan, China. There are 12 schools: Information Technology, Engineering, Business, Journalism & Media, Music, Industrial Arts, Medicine, Physical Education (Sports Sciences), Foreign Languages (English, Korean, Japanese), Chinese for Foreigners, Nationalities and International Studies. Students take either three- or four-year courses. There are approximately 1'500 members of staff, 40'000 students and an annual enrolment of some 17'000 new students. There are two campuses, north and south. There are currently (2011) approximately 25 foreign teachers at HuangKeDa including: Americans, Canadians, English, Ghanaian, Irish, Japanese, Kiwi and Scottish. Most teachers, if not all, live in university-provided accommodation oat the south campus. Most teachers, if not all, teach all their classes at either the School of Foreign Languages or the School of International Studies. Both Schools are situated on the south campus, not five minutes walk from the foreign teachers' residence. The typical contract (2011) is 20 hours of teaching per week - although this may be subject to change. Foreign teachers are almost always required for classes in Oral English as the College looks to increase its foreign staff, and it's also worth checking to see what other classes may need teachers. If you have any questions about working at HuangKeDa, please feel free to send me a message through the Contact Me page. For more information, please contact [email protected] or visit the official (Chinese) website www.hhstu.edu.cn
This Tuesday is Tomb Sweeping Day, a national holiday and so a day off work. Like France, we get Monday off as well. Yay! No, we work today as well. Except that just about all the students have gone home for three days (yesterday only four students came for a class of 22) and those that are still here aren't coming because it's raining. Classic. I've got a lesson at 2.30pm of (usually) 27 nursing students. The class leader, who I get the impression runs a pretty tight ship as the others are rarely absent, has just told me we might have ten today ... if we're lucky. So, I've got plenty of time later to book hostels etc. Skype? 11 days to go! Hey,
I'd forgotten about this, but last semester we were all asked/told to submit a four page teaching plan for an example class by the end of the week for review by a professor in the Department. In hindsight, some of may have been a bit snotty about having to do it: at the time, our pay was about a week late, again, and nobody ever, ever writes a four page plan for a class. Hey,
Not much to report since we got back - classes are in full swing again and have started well. I've kept four of the five classes I had last semester which is nice - I know their names, faces, English levels and who to call on when I need to model an exercise etc. I'm a bit concerned that I may have already used all my 'tricks', jokes and games, so will need to change gear soon to keep them from getting bored. I don't think there's any danger of that happening for a while with my new class though... 27 nursing students... all girls. I've got a selection of my photos from Laos online here. I'm working through Vietnam next and then I'll go back to the start in Yunnan. No real reason I decided to do it that way... X Things on campus definitely feel like they're winding down for the end of the semester. Christmas was the first thing, when classes about Rudolph took over the International Studies building and the students brought presents in for us. Then there was a leaving-do for Becky, the other English teacher, who'll be sorely missed as she's returning to the UK and the real world off-campus. Then there's western New Year tomorrow which feels like the end of the year even though there's another week of the semester to go. In fact, things are at the most intense now as I've got hours and hours and hours and hours of 5 minute oral exams stacked up with all 150-or-so of my students. Today, I had six hours worth and must've heard 50 times how "handsome and tall" Kobe Bryant - the guy you've never heard of before, right, who's a hero in China - is and how "I very like him. He is many bigger than the different players." Grammatical constructions like that aside, it was actually really satisfying to speak to my students one-to-one for a change. My best students were good, as expected, but I was actually surprised by how good some of the kids I'd passed off as being of 'average ability' were - in many cases they beat those that have been top of the class all semester. Some other folded and didn't manage to string ten words together, but I think it was mainly nerves in most cases. They'll pass the course thanks to their high attendance (50% of their final grade) so won't have to resit... I'm not sure how I feel about that, although I'm happy not to have to sit through another string of near-identical speeches in praise of the mighty Kobe. Quote of the Day? "He is very in my heart. I want to be Kobe. I love Kobe." Apparently, Chairman Mao once advised children to fall asleep in class if they were bored by their teachers. Great. Thanks for that, mate. That'll be really comforting when nobody in my class of 44 is listening, or indeed conscious, at 8am tomorrow. Brilliant. Hi,
Sorry I couldn't chat for longer last night - the time difference caught up with me. After a long week of teaching, make-up classes, meetings about pay and trying (not very successfully) to learn my lines for this play, I'll be glad when term finishes and we fly to Kunming on 7th January! |
Photo Blog hereThere's a selection of photos from my time in China, and travels over Spring Festival, on these pages. Categories
All
Archives
June 2011
|