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For the past few years I have been a ESL teacher in China. I have thought young learners and adults. Both in groups as well one on one. This summary task is about teaching groups and my experience in doing so. First of all I want to say that I prefer to teach in groups, big or small, both are fine for me. I prefer a lot of interaction between students. In my classes I’m usually more the facilitator and I try to encourage the students to interact with each other. This isn’t possible when teaching one on one. Teaching groups involve many students. I think it’s important that when you want to learn a foreign language, you learn by interacting with fellow students. In China adult students are often shy. Too shy to speak a lot with the teacher but not too shy to speak with their fellow students or colleagues. With similar level students they dare to try and make mistakes. When talking to me; the teacher they often become shy and are scared to make mistakes. When Chinese students make mistakes they are afraid to lose face. This is something you should always be aware of. Teaching groups is fun because of the interaction that can occur. Chinese are used to learn by repetition. But quite often this doesn’t let them understand the language. By trying to get rid of this repetition learning students can learn to think for them self and so understand a language faster and better. In my opinion this way of teaching is the only way to make a foreign teacher valuable. Many Chinese teachers have excellent pronunciation and can do perfect repetition style classes. The value of adding a foreign teacher in a Chinese class of students is to not only add spoken English but also a bit of western culture. That’s why I choose to teach different than the usual Chinese teaching system. The experience I have with teaching one on one in China is that the student is often a special case. Usually shy or someone with concentration problems. Or very often just very rich, and think one on one means more time for him/her alone. Which of course is true but not always better. To learn English there are so many options like one on one learning apps for example. Which is basically the same as one on one only the teacher isn’t there physically. Because of these App alternatives and the price of a one on one teacher, I think teaching one on one with a teacher is getting less popular in China. This is also a reason why I only focus on teaching groups. To insure a job for the long term in China teaching groups is the best option. By teaching a lot more experience will build up and will make you a wanted teacher in China. The days that just a foreign job will guaranty you a job in China are over. Experience and qualification are important, like they always should have been.
