ESL: Teaching English in Asia (esp. Yunnan, China & Thailand, Laos, Cambodia)
09 March 2017 [link youtube]
Some practical advice (and reflections) on teaching English in Asia, with reference to both university-level classrooms and children (the whole range of ages, basically).
Youtube Automatic Transcription
I've been teaching English teaching
English at the second language in Asia has never been my main job has never been my main passion it's not what I studied in university but it is something I've done in between other jobs and some that have done so that I could study languages history politics etc in several different countries here at asia currently I'm living in China but I'm writing the edge of Southeast Asia fascinating part of you nan right by the border with Myanmar working primarily with university students also of experience with kids basically all age levels of experience teaching adults in the workplace to blah blah blah what do I have to say in this video what strikes me now in getting back into teaching English after several years pauses several years in which i haven't taught English the second limb Joel but during those years I have given lectures in university settings and academic settings and conferences and given lectures to university students in different situations and have been lecturing here on YouTube in a sense you know I'd say the most striking thing to me getting back into it after several years is the difference in your perception of time I think one of the skills you really need is to perceive time in a very different way whether you're teaching in 40 minute segments or one hour blocks whatever the setup is where you really feel the passage of time while you're being engaged with the students while you're writing on the chalkboard where you're aware of how time is passing both to use it efficiently and in offense in a sense you know work the crowd keep the engagement with the audience going and you know it is one of the real difference between people some people can do that naturally some people can do it as a learned behavior and some people never can learn it you know I think some people can never quite pick up the knack of having a sense of how time passes moment to moment that way so that really struck me just now getting back into the classroom after so many years is it oh yeah I have to fit back into this very different way of perceiving time and every moment counts you know I was a student learning German in Germany when I was paying to take language classes in Germany um I remember another student complained to me that one of the teachers who had just come back after many years in administration so he had lost to a knack that he would simply stand there thinking for a few moments at a time but in between shifting between topics shifting between different rules of grammar who's trying to explain whatever it was but she said that alone made it absolutely intolerable she said you could sit there with a stopwatch and time how many minutes he was wasting so you know you have to be engaging the students constantly you have to be aware of how time is passing you have to be using their time in a way that's meaningful and of course you know when you're coming up to the last ten minutes you got to wrap up the topic or you gotta wrap up the lesson you deliver that in a way that's meaningful now with the university students you know I do explain my methodology so to speak so just go to comment a live chat thing it's an art for sure I don't know man like you know it did different strokes for different folks different people of different natural strengths for me I do have a kind of natural theatricality that I exploit in YouTube videos back when I was a religious figure I used to be a Buddhist I could stand up in a room full of Buddhist monks and give a lecture on philosophy with no script you know I talk a good game and I've been like that for my whole adult life you know not at age fourteen obviously to some extent it's nurture to some extent its nature to some stats it's hard experience but you know it's not not I'm it's fine it's totally good comment it's an art for sure its real I mean it's not an art it's education right teaching is not stand up comedy and I mean what you're only leaning on and you see the limits of it is simply the sincere interest to your students in every classroom you walk into if you got 40 students you're going to feel right away which students are really motivated to learn and which ones aren't and you're never going to change that there's an old phrase in Latin villain on dis couture I can teach you English but I can't teach you to want to learn English I can't teach you to want it the will the one thing that's the part I can't I can't teach you you know so you come into a room and you have 40 students and they're all at different levels of ability they're all different levels of inspiration or different levels of motivation when they come into the room and when they leave the room they're going to be even more unequal education does not create equality it exacerbates inequality the most talented students are going to advance more or the most highly motivated students whatever it may be and others are just going to get further further behind and you get to see that happen you don't you see that happened over months or years you can see it in one day you can see it in 12 our university lecture I can see the students that are making progress in the two hours and the students who aren't I'm not perfect but we're saying you do see striking examples of that even within your first class you know I said to my students at the university level this year I said to them openly I said to specially in both English and Chinese i'll come back to that issue some of you will just want to find a job in a hotel and that's fine if you want to work in a hotel you use just a few words of English again and again your English doesn't have to be terribly advanced doesn't have to be terribly in-depth every day at the hotel people ask you where's the bathroom people say to you I need a taxi there were just a few questions you get every day at the hotel in English again and again and that's it that's fine i said but some of you want to become school teachers now actually the vast majority of my students wanted to come school teachers that's the particular program they're enrolled in and some of you want to become translators and some of you want to fly to America and get a job in America if you want to do that then suddenly the level of effort expected you is way higher your level of commitment the amount of work yet to put in this class is much much more and I said to them you know if you're not motivated to do that that's okay i am not going to be angry at you i'm not going to punish you it's your choice I respect your choice I respect your decision to work hard to try to reach the level or to not work hard you can still learn from this class you can still benefit from this class relaxing and taking it easy not everyone is going to become a professional translator not everyone is going to become you know an English teacher themselves or fight over there I I really do appreciate that many of you are going to choose career paths where you never use English again right so I set out the the methodology for the course and I really let them know this is the behavior I accept positively I accept there's a you know there's a range or the students in effect when I'm saying this is not have a say but what I'm saying in effect is I accept that some of you want to sit at the back of the class and not work that hurt and some of you want to sit at the front of the class and devote your full attention I respect that and I told them what I don't respect I don't respect you playing video games in class I don't respect you sending text messages in class I don't respect you using a phone or computer at all and I said if you want to do that don't come to class if you're sick or tired you have a cold you broke up with your boyfriend you're sad okay don't come but if you come here and they all sounded cute not a single one of my students this year was offended not a single one was angry or defensive I got out this this great prop I have and it tell them it's a cell phone prison to sort of Shoetique device I said if you use your cell phone in class no I'm going to take your cell phone away from you and I'm going to put it in the pockets of this cell phone prison you know you get you get your phone back at the end of class you know if the only you can't use your cell phone for next 45 minutes or something it's not that big a deal but you know I'm gonna take your cell phone to listen you so again this is how I start at the university level this advice is only going to be useful for a very small numbers telling you just tell you know a troll the job is only rewarding if you are yourself learning the students first language I've got to say that's crucial when I was in Cambodia I spoke Cambodian very poorly but even if you're just using little phrases if you're just using the word noun verb adjective in Cambodia in there their first one was in the students first language then you're practicing that every day even if you're just using if you're telling them no no say it to me in a complete sentence no no say it to me in English you're saying that in Cambodian you know or tie or lotion or Chinese you know even if it's just the the clarification phrases and this kind of thing that you're you're using their their language for that adds up to a lot of hours of practicing the target language and actually when i'm teaching english i use a lot of chinese now currently living in China when I lived in Laos I used a lot of lotion when I was when I was teaching English too so that is inherently very rewarding and I can't understand the guys who do this job without learning or studying the host language people say host language and target language if if you don't it is really I think it really just takes the soul out of the job you know what I mean and again I think that's you know maybe it's a matter of character or what have you there are a lot of suspicious things with the people who choose to become English teachers in Asia every other category of the education industry is dominated by females right and yet mysteriously here in China the vast majority of the English teachers are male why is that is it just that women are risk averse that they're afraid to come out and live here in the rough hinterlands of China I doubt it I think a lot of the men because I've met them talk to them look in their eyes a lot of them are here for batteries and i don't mean money you know alcohol sex maybe gambling maybe prostitution sadly yes again there's almost nobody thought a bit about money because the money isn't enough to meet you it's just not I mean you're better off working in a donut store that are up working in Starbucks or McDonald's back in Canada United States doesn't make sense do it for the money right so if you are not motivated by something like the study of language history politics something if you are not yourself a student as well as being a teacher then it's absolutely it's absolutely not worth doing I don't know and again so many these things come down to irreducible elements of personality so I have had the experience over the years you know where you really don't have enough time for class prep where for some for some reason that day you're busy or you're sick you've got to drive your girlfriend to the hospital or something you know something happens where you really don't have time to prep and then you go in and you do your class with only 15 minutes of prep for something and you know for me I've never had the experience of wishing that I'd done more prep you know sometimes for me this is just for my personality that those experiences are more thrilling okay I gotta improv like okay I just got 15 minutes to think what am I going to talk about it i'm going to talk about crocodiles i'm gonna talk about how in florida it's dangerous to go swimming with crocodiles you know that sorry i just made up that up now that could be a great lesson let's engage the whole class what do you do let's have a look of a bunch of discussions english do an essay assignment what do you do if you're attacked by a crocodile you know come up with with something random it's it's really strange like the less preparation you do for me from my personality that the more rewarding the job feels but they're like right now I do improvised lectures on YouTube all the time that's that's not personality type and if you do more preparation it's definitely true i mean i think if you over prepare then you can set yourself up for disappointment when the students don't get it when they don't react well when they're not interested and then how are you going to feel if you put three hours into preparing a one hour lesson and the students there just for whatever reason ignorance indolence for whatever reason they're not falling than uninterested what then right now of course some people their solution is to prep spend six hours preparing multiple lessons so the students don't like it during the lesson they can switch and students don't the students can't do it sorry but not maybe they're just not capable of participating in your lesson as you uh as you set it out um but you know again so so speaking about both the university level and and children are younger than university level I mean I think the greatest gift your employer can give you is accurate information on the students interests right so I was invited to take a job which I'm not going to take one of you guys can take the job by the way if any of you guys want to move here that was I should recruit I should start recruiting employees by my patreon subscribers those it great start interviewing you guys see if you want to want to move in next door to me here work in my town in China but you know they they invited me to take up a job just teaching medical students now a job is very very hard university level students studying medicine so some to become doctors sending some nurses some for other specialized professions within hospitals right but I know then there are many many ways in which that job is hard I think they wanted me to teach a teen classes a week so 18 university lectures a week right tough but the gifts they give you is that they tell you what the students are interested in they tell you that they're all medical students so already for me the curriculum writes itself I can sit down no internet access no no books no text I don't need to text books if I know that these 40 students in the classroom that every single one of them has to deal with Latin vocabulary in English pharmacopoeia names of technical tools and instruments in the hospital what's the difference between a scalpel and a suture you know stitches amazing words about hygiene some plastic gloves even the fact that they're there in a hospital setting I could use you know some crappy soap operas set in the hospital I could play video clips from soap operas or movies there's so many American movies that are said in the hospital already just that one word hospital all of these all of these all these students having that much in common that's already such a gift for an educator right now that's some of you might think that's the hardest kind of job teaching university level and those would be students by the way who are not interested in learning English those would be Chinese students were their real interest is in becoming a medical doctor and they're being forced to learn English as a job requirement so that that would be tough that's not like getting a bunch of students who really want to become English Lit majors or want to become translators they would not be motivated in the way other students would but the hardest thing is of course by contrast if you're really talking about children children at any age like 13 year old children what are their interests what did they have in common it's not like they're going to be all committed to learning medicine right it's not even that they'll be interested in English sadly they may be there because their parents forcibly show that's tough to be honest with you I mean in many many ways teaching children is easier the teaching adults are is easier than teaching University students but the greatest gift your employer can give you it's accurate information about your students motivations and almost by definition with children you can never know that [Music]
English at the second language in Asia has never been my main job has never been my main passion it's not what I studied in university but it is something I've done in between other jobs and some that have done so that I could study languages history politics etc in several different countries here at asia currently I'm living in China but I'm writing the edge of Southeast Asia fascinating part of you nan right by the border with Myanmar working primarily with university students also of experience with kids basically all age levels of experience teaching adults in the workplace to blah blah blah what do I have to say in this video what strikes me now in getting back into teaching English after several years pauses several years in which i haven't taught English the second limb Joel but during those years I have given lectures in university settings and academic settings and conferences and given lectures to university students in different situations and have been lecturing here on YouTube in a sense you know I'd say the most striking thing to me getting back into it after several years is the difference in your perception of time I think one of the skills you really need is to perceive time in a very different way whether you're teaching in 40 minute segments or one hour blocks whatever the setup is where you really feel the passage of time while you're being engaged with the students while you're writing on the chalkboard where you're aware of how time is passing both to use it efficiently and in offense in a sense you know work the crowd keep the engagement with the audience going and you know it is one of the real difference between people some people can do that naturally some people can do it as a learned behavior and some people never can learn it you know I think some people can never quite pick up the knack of having a sense of how time passes moment to moment that way so that really struck me just now getting back into the classroom after so many years is it oh yeah I have to fit back into this very different way of perceiving time and every moment counts you know I was a student learning German in Germany when I was paying to take language classes in Germany um I remember another student complained to me that one of the teachers who had just come back after many years in administration so he had lost to a knack that he would simply stand there thinking for a few moments at a time but in between shifting between topics shifting between different rules of grammar who's trying to explain whatever it was but she said that alone made it absolutely intolerable she said you could sit there with a stopwatch and time how many minutes he was wasting so you know you have to be engaging the students constantly you have to be aware of how time is passing you have to be using their time in a way that's meaningful and of course you know when you're coming up to the last ten minutes you got to wrap up the topic or you gotta wrap up the lesson you deliver that in a way that's meaningful now with the university students you know I do explain my methodology so to speak so just go to comment a live chat thing it's an art for sure I don't know man like you know it did different strokes for different folks different people of different natural strengths for me I do have a kind of natural theatricality that I exploit in YouTube videos back when I was a religious figure I used to be a Buddhist I could stand up in a room full of Buddhist monks and give a lecture on philosophy with no script you know I talk a good game and I've been like that for my whole adult life you know not at age fourteen obviously to some extent it's nurture to some extent its nature to some stats it's hard experience but you know it's not not I'm it's fine it's totally good comment it's an art for sure its real I mean it's not an art it's education right teaching is not stand up comedy and I mean what you're only leaning on and you see the limits of it is simply the sincere interest to your students in every classroom you walk into if you got 40 students you're going to feel right away which students are really motivated to learn and which ones aren't and you're never going to change that there's an old phrase in Latin villain on dis couture I can teach you English but I can't teach you to want to learn English I can't teach you to want it the will the one thing that's the part I can't I can't teach you you know so you come into a room and you have 40 students and they're all at different levels of ability they're all different levels of inspiration or different levels of motivation when they come into the room and when they leave the room they're going to be even more unequal education does not create equality it exacerbates inequality the most talented students are going to advance more or the most highly motivated students whatever it may be and others are just going to get further further behind and you get to see that happen you don't you see that happened over months or years you can see it in one day you can see it in 12 our university lecture I can see the students that are making progress in the two hours and the students who aren't I'm not perfect but we're saying you do see striking examples of that even within your first class you know I said to my students at the university level this year I said to them openly I said to specially in both English and Chinese i'll come back to that issue some of you will just want to find a job in a hotel and that's fine if you want to work in a hotel you use just a few words of English again and again your English doesn't have to be terribly advanced doesn't have to be terribly in-depth every day at the hotel people ask you where's the bathroom people say to you I need a taxi there were just a few questions you get every day at the hotel in English again and again and that's it that's fine i said but some of you want to become school teachers now actually the vast majority of my students wanted to come school teachers that's the particular program they're enrolled in and some of you want to become translators and some of you want to fly to America and get a job in America if you want to do that then suddenly the level of effort expected you is way higher your level of commitment the amount of work yet to put in this class is much much more and I said to them you know if you're not motivated to do that that's okay i am not going to be angry at you i'm not going to punish you it's your choice I respect your choice I respect your decision to work hard to try to reach the level or to not work hard you can still learn from this class you can still benefit from this class relaxing and taking it easy not everyone is going to become a professional translator not everyone is going to become you know an English teacher themselves or fight over there I I really do appreciate that many of you are going to choose career paths where you never use English again right so I set out the the methodology for the course and I really let them know this is the behavior I accept positively I accept there's a you know there's a range or the students in effect when I'm saying this is not have a say but what I'm saying in effect is I accept that some of you want to sit at the back of the class and not work that hurt and some of you want to sit at the front of the class and devote your full attention I respect that and I told them what I don't respect I don't respect you playing video games in class I don't respect you sending text messages in class I don't respect you using a phone or computer at all and I said if you want to do that don't come to class if you're sick or tired you have a cold you broke up with your boyfriend you're sad okay don't come but if you come here and they all sounded cute not a single one of my students this year was offended not a single one was angry or defensive I got out this this great prop I have and it tell them it's a cell phone prison to sort of Shoetique device I said if you use your cell phone in class no I'm going to take your cell phone away from you and I'm going to put it in the pockets of this cell phone prison you know you get you get your phone back at the end of class you know if the only you can't use your cell phone for next 45 minutes or something it's not that big a deal but you know I'm gonna take your cell phone to listen you so again this is how I start at the university level this advice is only going to be useful for a very small numbers telling you just tell you know a troll the job is only rewarding if you are yourself learning the students first language I've got to say that's crucial when I was in Cambodia I spoke Cambodian very poorly but even if you're just using little phrases if you're just using the word noun verb adjective in Cambodia in there their first one was in the students first language then you're practicing that every day even if you're just using if you're telling them no no say it to me in a complete sentence no no say it to me in English you're saying that in Cambodian you know or tie or lotion or Chinese you know even if it's just the the clarification phrases and this kind of thing that you're you're using their their language for that adds up to a lot of hours of practicing the target language and actually when i'm teaching english i use a lot of chinese now currently living in China when I lived in Laos I used a lot of lotion when I was when I was teaching English too so that is inherently very rewarding and I can't understand the guys who do this job without learning or studying the host language people say host language and target language if if you don't it is really I think it really just takes the soul out of the job you know what I mean and again I think that's you know maybe it's a matter of character or what have you there are a lot of suspicious things with the people who choose to become English teachers in Asia every other category of the education industry is dominated by females right and yet mysteriously here in China the vast majority of the English teachers are male why is that is it just that women are risk averse that they're afraid to come out and live here in the rough hinterlands of China I doubt it I think a lot of the men because I've met them talk to them look in their eyes a lot of them are here for batteries and i don't mean money you know alcohol sex maybe gambling maybe prostitution sadly yes again there's almost nobody thought a bit about money because the money isn't enough to meet you it's just not I mean you're better off working in a donut store that are up working in Starbucks or McDonald's back in Canada United States doesn't make sense do it for the money right so if you are not motivated by something like the study of language history politics something if you are not yourself a student as well as being a teacher then it's absolutely it's absolutely not worth doing I don't know and again so many these things come down to irreducible elements of personality so I have had the experience over the years you know where you really don't have enough time for class prep where for some for some reason that day you're busy or you're sick you've got to drive your girlfriend to the hospital or something you know something happens where you really don't have time to prep and then you go in and you do your class with only 15 minutes of prep for something and you know for me I've never had the experience of wishing that I'd done more prep you know sometimes for me this is just for my personality that those experiences are more thrilling okay I gotta improv like okay I just got 15 minutes to think what am I going to talk about it i'm going to talk about crocodiles i'm gonna talk about how in florida it's dangerous to go swimming with crocodiles you know that sorry i just made up that up now that could be a great lesson let's engage the whole class what do you do let's have a look of a bunch of discussions english do an essay assignment what do you do if you're attacked by a crocodile you know come up with with something random it's it's really strange like the less preparation you do for me from my personality that the more rewarding the job feels but they're like right now I do improvised lectures on YouTube all the time that's that's not personality type and if you do more preparation it's definitely true i mean i think if you over prepare then you can set yourself up for disappointment when the students don't get it when they don't react well when they're not interested and then how are you going to feel if you put three hours into preparing a one hour lesson and the students there just for whatever reason ignorance indolence for whatever reason they're not falling than uninterested what then right now of course some people their solution is to prep spend six hours preparing multiple lessons so the students don't like it during the lesson they can switch and students don't the students can't do it sorry but not maybe they're just not capable of participating in your lesson as you uh as you set it out um but you know again so so speaking about both the university level and and children are younger than university level I mean I think the greatest gift your employer can give you is accurate information on the students interests right so I was invited to take a job which I'm not going to take one of you guys can take the job by the way if any of you guys want to move here that was I should recruit I should start recruiting employees by my patreon subscribers those it great start interviewing you guys see if you want to want to move in next door to me here work in my town in China but you know they they invited me to take up a job just teaching medical students now a job is very very hard university level students studying medicine so some to become doctors sending some nurses some for other specialized professions within hospitals right but I know then there are many many ways in which that job is hard I think they wanted me to teach a teen classes a week so 18 university lectures a week right tough but the gifts they give you is that they tell you what the students are interested in they tell you that they're all medical students so already for me the curriculum writes itself I can sit down no internet access no no books no text I don't need to text books if I know that these 40 students in the classroom that every single one of them has to deal with Latin vocabulary in English pharmacopoeia names of technical tools and instruments in the hospital what's the difference between a scalpel and a suture you know stitches amazing words about hygiene some plastic gloves even the fact that they're there in a hospital setting I could use you know some crappy soap operas set in the hospital I could play video clips from soap operas or movies there's so many American movies that are said in the hospital already just that one word hospital all of these all of these all these students having that much in common that's already such a gift for an educator right now that's some of you might think that's the hardest kind of job teaching university level and those would be students by the way who are not interested in learning English those would be Chinese students were their real interest is in becoming a medical doctor and they're being forced to learn English as a job requirement so that that would be tough that's not like getting a bunch of students who really want to become English Lit majors or want to become translators they would not be motivated in the way other students would but the hardest thing is of course by contrast if you're really talking about children children at any age like 13 year old children what are their interests what did they have in common it's not like they're going to be all committed to learning medicine right it's not even that they'll be interested in English sadly they may be there because their parents forcibly show that's tough to be honest with you I mean in many many ways teaching children is easier the teaching adults are is easier than teaching University students but the greatest gift your employer can give you it's accurate information about your students motivations and almost by definition with children you can never know that [Music]