Making an American Culture Course for ESL Teachers in China

Many people that go overseas to teach English find that they land in schools with unrealistic expectations or are under prepared to handle the requests sent their way.

One of those most frustrating requests comes when you’re asked to prepare and teach an American culture class: they’ll say “you’re free to use whatever material you want” (which is code for, ‘we don’t have any curriculum for you and we have no idea what we want you to teach’). They assume that you’re Western, and therefore capable of teaching everything about American culture.

The reality is that a Midwesterner is going to be considerably different from a North-Easterner, who is going to be different from a Southerner. But, to some degree, your director is right in asking you teach and not a local English speaking Chinese teacher.

So what do you need to do and consider when building a course?

The three basic elements I look for when building a course are:

1. Can this material be quickly made into a course,
2. Can it be easily adapted to my students level if he/she is higher/lower than I was told, and
3. Will this material satisfy the needs of the student(s) I’m teaching?

These elements relate to the flexibility and usefulness of the course you design.

• Too complex may mean designing the course will eat up all your free time.
• Too structured and you will be devastated when your student turns out to be on a higher or lower level than you were told (very common occurrence).
• Too general will make your material useless to your student and will earn you a poor reputation as a teacher (making it difficult to find additional students and quality teaching positions).

RESEARCH

The first step is going to be to do your research.

Make this as easy as possible and begin with the highest quality material possible first and add supplementary information later.

San Francisco is the most common destination for Chinese students going abroad, so we will use it as our example: however, any destination within the US can use the same concept.

The following resource pages and search concepts can be easily adapted to your needs:

• http://www.sanfrancisco.com/

By simply searching for the name of your city you will find excellent information.

Although this isn’t the official city page, it has a plethora of links and quality resources that can be made into a useful “resource packet” for your student.

• http://www.sfgov.org/

Every major city has an official city page: use this page as your introduction to the culture course.

The official city webpage, it contains a lot of important information, including important city events (useful in building a “snapshot” city picture), links for social events and how to connect (useful in building a tools & resources packet) and information on transportation (very useful as most Chinese are not accustomed to owning their own car and may prefer a bus), recreation like parks and libraries (also useful for adult parents and students), and public safety (useful in easing concerns that some Chinese may feel that America resembles the “action movies” from Hollywood).

• http://www.onlyinsanfrancisco.com/

Many major cities that are accustomed to foreign exchange students coming to their city may feature content-rich sites such as this one that can be very beneficial to your student.

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco

Introduce your student to Wikipedia. It’s a part of American culture (as is internet freedom, variety, and choice).

Also, Wikipedia is an excellent source for you to find raw information and dig up additional links and resources from their notes citation section at the bottom.

Do a Google search for the name of their intended university, workplace, or reason for going abroad to find specific topics to supplement your course with.

City-related content can compose your first section of the course. Because of my teaching style, I prefer to start with local culture introductions and then build into general American culture topics.

Begin compiling this by copy/pasting everything into a word document and removing the superfluous information, pictures, and links that you do not intend to teach.

TIP: even though there are no copy-right laws in China, always cite your resources for your students sake; this helps him/her understand the importance of such practices when he/she arrives in the States and will also provide him/her a link to find more information on their own.

ORGANIZING AND PLANNING:

Now you’ll need to organize your information, divide it up, and put it into a lesson plan. All this information should not be taught all at once.

You need to divide your course into however many days/weeks you are teaching this particular class. Supplemental information will be filled in later to create a rich experience for the student, but the core is what you should concentrate on first.

Most “VIP” students or small culture classes will ask for between 10 to 25 classes, each class being 1 to 2 hours long.

TIP: don’t assume they understand anything about US culture- your classes will need many quick (1-2 sentence) explanations for most of the content you feature as well as supplemental study material for them to take home.

CHALLENGE:

Most students are there because they’ve been enrolled by their parents and have little to no choice. Your challenge is to involve them into your class by finding out what their likes and dislikes are, their skills, their English level, and whether they are excited, scared, or indifferent about going abroad.

So, when planning your material, don’t sacrifice flexibility and potentially interesting material for the sake of information. You will need activities!

Here is a general “PLAN” for organizing information and creating your course:

1. SECTION 1: Local Culture and City information
2. SECTION 2: Area Activities, Entertainment, Eating, and Social Etiquette
3. SECTION 3: General American Culture and Current Events

If you’re quick at doing math, you’ll already see that this leaves you between 3 classes per section (for a 10 period class) and 8 classes per section (for the 25 period class).

How much supplemental information you add will depend entirely on how many classes you teach, your students particular interest, and how advanced he/she is.

THE FIRST CLASS

Your first class is going to be an introduction and “getting to know you” class.

Now that you’ve put together the core information that will compose the rest of your class, you are able to build your first class, which is uniquely important as it will set the tone for how the rest of your classes will progress.

The introduction class will need the following elements:

1. Overview of your course- including course features, topics, tools, and objectives.
2. Explanation of course procedures- class structure.
3. Your personal introduction- where you’re from, where you graduated from, whether you’re married or not, and what you like to do (for starters).
4. Your student’s personal introduction- (similar information).
5. A break- allows things to set in.
6. Conversation time- free talk is important to getting comfortable with each other and learning about your student.
7. Activity 1- you’ll need a personal information evaluation form that includes simple questions about their background, hobbies, education, and preferences (HINT- you can use your Facebook profile page to find questions to ask).
8. Activity 2- you should each list 15 personal interests. Then, compare, discuss, and expand to see what interests you have in common and what interests you might be able to dig out that are in common.

COURSE ELEMENTS:

Building a course requires that you understand what “elements” you’re going to include and rely on.

For example, activities and games are one element of a course, as are the books, quizzes, and tests.

Outlining what “elements” you will include can help you stay organized, as well as help you avoid boring repetitions of the same activities and features.

Here are some basic elements that each class will need:

· Snapshot: includes quick, general facts about the days lesson and topic- usually has 5 short-discussion questions.

· Key Features: this can include key historical features about your lesson, to important concepts that students need to comprehend- I suggest creating 2 to 3 short-discussion or multiple choice questions per key feature to ensure students comprehend these elements.

· Books, Packets, and Reference Lists: if you’re designing this course, you may not have a book, however, you may wish to include a Chinese-English dictionary as part of your course- this is a class element. Resource packets with references and study suggestions are another example, and reference lists can be used to compile useful references, words, and even websites for the student.

· Activities: these are incredibly important. Every ESL teacher builds up their own list of activities over time, but it is crucial that you have planned at least 2 activities per class (1 unique per class at least). So you will want a list of between 20 to 50 activities that can be done.

· Lesson Plans: you already have an idea of what you’re going to do, but you should have a basic outline of how each class is going to flow.

· Quizzes: will your class feature quizzes? Chinese parents love hearing that their child has been quizzed and tested, so it is a good idea to prepare quizzes.

· Tests: how many will your student have?

· Field Trips: is there an authentic “Western Restaurant” that you think might be fitting to take your student to?

· Parent-day class: not ever class has this element, but it adds pressure to both the teacher and the student- prepare for these, including how to prepare your student for this event.

· Conversation Corners: many teachers over-use this element when teaching VIP or small group classes, however, free-talk and topic-based conversation times are very important to teaching English. Simply remember that overusing this feature will earn you a reputation as a lazy teacher (most likely).

· Power Point & Documents: will you use PP and/or other documents? If so, know ahead of time so that you can ensure maximum efficiency and avoid redundancy in your lessons. The worst thing you can do is to be redundant; you’ll lose your students attention and interest and the class will drag on (for both of you).

As every teacher’s style varies, so will the elements. Not every element will be present in your class, but you should have an idea at the outset of what your class will consist of.

CATEGORIES:

Finding supplemental information is not as hard as many teachers think (providing you have access to the Internet or some kind of encyclopedia.

Performing a word search for “History of” + (name of city) will turn up literally 100’s (if not more) of useful, quick, and pertinent short articles that can be easily incorporated into your class.

Here is an example list:

1. San Francisco History
2. Famous Features
3. Special events
4. Unique qualities
5. Night Life
6. Social Opportunities
7. Dinner & a Movie
8. Transportation
9. Safety & Emergency
10. Talking Points

Something interesting to note about these 10 categories is that every category is introduced, covered, and in some way highlighted in at least some level or degree in the four links I provided at the top about San Francisco!

Further information should serve as supplemental information, not substantive core material.

TIP: you can search for pictures of the city and city life to insert into any course documents you create to add some professional flavor to your work and help your student see what he/she is learning!

CREATING/FINDING SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL

Now that you’ve created the core course contents, created a work flow, and organized your material, the rest of the work should fall together rather quickly.

Here are a few example suggestions for finding supplemental material for your course:

· http://www.lifeintheusa.com/

o This is a phenomenal webpage with testimonials from other immigrants to the US, advice, and basic introductions to some pretty useful concepts.

o You can use this for your course and also as a top resource to give them for their own personal perusing.

· http://www.empowermentzone.com/life_usa.txt

o This is a great article on general American culture. You can design an entire hour and a half class period to center around this article by adapting it into a reading/discussion format with relative ease.

· http://www.essortment.com/american-culture-foreigners-63697.html

o This article is long and needs reformatting, but provides additional perspective for your student; it is designed for foreigners in America to help take their understanding to the next level and get past some of the preconceived notions about America.

QUIZZES & TESTS

Parents may complain if you don’t give any quizzes to their children: they want to feel like they’ve gotten something for their money, and that is one way Chinese measure the worth of the class.

Be sure to have a quiz every 2 or 3 lessons.

Making these quizzes is a very simple process: the parents will never see the quiz, just the result!

Simply skim and review the material you’ve already compiled. Open a Word Document, make a numbered list 1-5, and make 5 sentences from the lesson that you will teach. Delete a key word and add an underline space to create fill in the blank style quiz. Then add 2 discussion questions.

After you do that, be sure to create a small “Evaluation Slip” that has a “score”, “grade”, “grade average”, “correction answers” and “teachers suggestion” space. Do not hand the quiz back to the student. Give your student can take this paper back home and show his or her parents and your home-made quiz will not come under scrutiny.

Tests are harder. I usually do a 100 question test, either in one test or split over 2 or 4 tests (depending on how long the term is).

You will have to mix multiple choice, fill in the blank, and discussion (essay) questions together, but I try to avoid “matching” because they are harder and more time-consuming to format on MS Word.

In case you need help on creating quizzes, here are a few quizzes that I have found useful online:

· http://www.metrolingua.com/quiz.htm

· http://www.metrolingua.com/quiz.htm

· http://www.metrolingua.com/answers.htm

NOTE: if you use these online quizzes, REMEMBER to build the information into your course as supplemental material!

SUMMARY:

Your teaching style will determine how much of this you can implement, and your student will determine how much of what you implement gets changed!

Most teachers do not outline their own course in this detail, however, most English training centers and universities do require you to hand in lesson plans, therefore, you will save yourself a lot of time in the future if you create and save these courses. You will doubtlessly need to teach this course multiple times throughout your career as an ESL teacher!

The important thing is to find a balance between your teaching style and the demands of your course.