The life of an english teacher (part 1)

Some of you have been asking exactly what I do over here so I'm going to try to explain my daily routine over here the best I can. For safety reasons, or in case I happen to do something extremely stupid in the future, I won't mention where I work-it's amazing how some people think that they can write whatever they want on the internet and nobody will find out about it (right Lieran?)

I work 5 days a week of course and on average about 8 hours a day. Because the weekends are busy times for schools I don't have the normal "weekend." My days off are Tuesday and Wednesday. I also don't work normal hours. I usually start at the crack of 1:20pm (except for weekends when I start at the absurdly early hour of 10:50am) and work till about 9pm at night. Because of these unusual hours, mornings are when I have to do most of my leisure activities (ie. go to the gym...and yeah that's about all.)

I usually teach 8 classes a day. Sometimes if it's a slow day I get lucky and might get a free. I work one day a week at a small school and if I'm lucky I get 2 or 3 free classes. You can't leave the school though so if you're by yourself it can get a little boring. Classes are 40 minutes long and are composed of up to 4 students. You rarely have more than one 4-student class a day though. On any given day you might have a couple 2 person classes, one or two 3 person classes and a couple of one-on-one classes. During the day you also have to teach kids classes (more on that another day) and you might have to do a voice lesson. Voice class is basically a chance for the students to use the language that they have learned. So you might have 5-6 students in a room with some couches and you just sit around and talk about whatever comes to mind. It's quite fun-especially with the high level students.

The students all have their own level. Levels range from 7C, 7B,7A, 6, 5, 4, and so on down to 2. 7C is the lowest level and 1 is a native english speaker (obviously we don't teach level 1's.) My school only teaches up to level 4 which is good because level 3 and up is a lot more difficult to teach in part because the language is a lot more advanced and because these levels haven't received the new textbooks yet. The old textbooks, to put it mildly, are wretched.

I'm not sure that I really consider myself a teacher-actually let me rephrase that- I don't consider myself a teacher. Any place that gives you a quota for level-ups to meet I don't consider an actual school but a business. I suppose we're more of a guide for the textbook more than anything. And of course we can answer any questions that the students may have. Once you learn how to do the lessons it's really dead easy. A class is usually comprised of a warm up session, where you just chat with the students and maybe briefly introduce the topic and see what skill they have with the language.

Then you get into the actual lesson. The first part usually covers vocabulary of whatever subject you're studying (ie. weekend plans, apologizing, assigning blame, etc) and then you go into some of the language using modeled phrases (ie. Q. What are you doing this weekend? A. I'm meeting friends at a bar downtown.) After you do a listen and repeat (you model it and they repeat it) you then practice it and do some drills.

Then there's a listening stage (you read out a dialogue and they have to answer some assigned questions about the dialogue,) followed by a couple of activities and then finally at the end of the class an application stage where the students get a chance to practice what they've learned.
It's the exact same formula for all levels (up to level 4) only the language get more difficult.

We usually get about 15 minutes between classes to grade the student and offer comments or suggestions for the next teacher-pretty standard stuff. There's no pass or fail or anything like that. Once the students achieve a certain level of proficiency they are given a level up and have to take a level up test to proceed to the next level. I suppose they do learn something so it can't be a complete waste of time. We must be doing something right I guess. Of course you get the odd person who is just completely hopeless. Only a couple though thankfully.

Bigger classes are easier because the teacher has to do less work. One on one classes are the most work because the teacher has to participate in all the activities and drills. I prefer the smaller classes though. They're more personal and you get a chance to just chat with the students-some of them can be quite interesting.

There's a huge range of students. There are a few general "classes" though.

First, is businessmen. Basically learning english because it will help them with their company. These people are usually pretty dry but you get the odd interesting one.

Second would be housewives. I'd say this category must comprise about half of the students. They either want to learn so they can talk with english friends or for travelling or they are just bored and want to do something during the day.

The last main category would be highschool kids (mostly girls) who are taking english classes because their parents think it's good for them. They're usually extremely shy, extremely quiet and extremely cute (oops did I say that out loud?) You basically cannot have a conversation with these girls. They talk so low that you can barely hear them, they usually look straight down at the floor and they appear to have no self confidence whatsoever. You can sometimes get them to come out of their shells but the trick is to find out what they like talking about. Fortunately that is very easy because it is usually anime, internet, J-pop or videogames. It will still basically be a one way conversation (you ask simple questions and they give simple answers) but at least you'll get a smile. And then you have a whole variety of people in between-university students, artists, exterminators, areobic instructors. Chatting with these people is usually pretty interesting.

After a while you get to know the students by name (i recognize most of them but I'm terrible at matching faces with names) and a lot of them you will get to know by number (each student's file number). The first thing we do when we get in each day is check the schedule and then groan about what student we might have to teach that day. If a student has some particular mannerisms then they'll probably be imitated by one of the teachers and all will have a good laugh in the teachers room.

Students are a constant source of amusement for the teachers. Through no fault of their own, students might say something extremely funny during the lesson, which will then be repeated after class in the teachers room. I'm reminded of once incident in particular where a lesson was being taught about starting conversations with strangers. One student didn't realize that the line "I hate elevators" was only to be used when actually in an elevator with someone else. The idea of this person approacthing someone in a convenience store and saying "I hate elevators" was a source of hilarity for us.

Hmm that's all for now I guess. If you have any questions feel free to ask in the comments section. I'll be happy to answer.