Spanish Teacher in China: Some Advice <

Spanish Teacher in China: Some Advice

I would like to share with you part of my experience as a teacher of ELE in a small town in the north east of china. I was working for 4 semesters in a private university, where I was their first Spanish teacher.

Before coming to china I had no adecuate training to teach Spanish so I decided to enroll onto the online course for teachers of ELE which Instituto Hemingway offered me. The experience was very enriching, as if my basic knowledge of life as an ELE teacher had been quite useful.

I will tell you a little bit about the students and the classes.

First day of class: It was my first time in the classroom as a teacher, I was very nervous, but I had planed the class in advance so that I felt sure what I was going to do, since I had led the basic course for ELE teachers.

I had in mind to use the 100% communicative method, that is to say, not to use another language in class more than Spanish, however having come into contact with the students this changed. Why?

Well, because in China until some time ago, the communicative method was not known: the most used method was translation. This had only been planned with the translation into English with some useful phrases in the classroom like for example “I don´t understand”, can you repeat that please? etc.

However, on my desk I found a note from someone who had asked me to teach them something easier like the alphabet, which they did not understand … well, as they had arrived at B1 level of English.

The classroom had no computers, projectors or audio systems, only 65 students, a whiteboard and me. It was when I felt exposed that I would ask myself whether it would be possible to learn a new language without having all the materials at hand in English, which was their main material.

My experience as a teacher of ELE was all right. The Chinese students had the tendency to memorize long lists of vocabulary and phrases out of context, and I wanted to change this and to a certain point and I achieved it. Slowly but surely I was introducing communicative activities, but various students during this period surrendered, others on the other hand were inspired and found that it was much more fun to learn a new language whilst speaking or doing something which one found interesting.

I have here a list of activities which I did and which are interesting:

Bingo: we did with words and numbers. Bingo helps students with listening and vocabulary.

Jeopardy: Is a game of questions and answers based on a television programme in the USA with the same name. The game can be played individually or with a group according to the number of students in each class. It is quite good for learning vocabulary and grammar. The Chinese are competitive; the simple fact of winning is enough for them to participate.

Make a recipie: One of the frequent questions of the chinese towards foreigners is: do you like chinese food? So take advantage of this and ask the group to share their favourite recipies.
Practice conjugating the verbs in the present simple tense, ordinal numbers and vocabulary. For example: “First cut the chicken into small pieces” “then fry the eggs”, etc.
This activity could be very useful when it comes to teaching the imperative. For example: “Cut the chicken into small chunks.”

Advise me: In order to practice the imperative (positive) i asked them to write me some advice based on the subjects that I suggested to them. “To have clean skin, to get thin, to be pretty, to learn Chinese, to find a partner, etc.” “If you want to have healthy skin: take a bath everyday, eat lots of fruit, drink lots of water, etc”

A card for your friend my students like to draw, paint and finally handicrafts. For December I asked them to make a card for their best friend. They quite enjoyed this with the class and I am sure that they have learnt new phrases.

For the final project of the first year of the course I asked them to produce an informative mural about all the hispanic speaking countries, which included cultural landscapes, history, entertainment, etc. And as a final project of the second and last year of the course, I gave them the choice to record a short film around 15 minutes, or to make a comic. They participated very enthusiastically and I kept the videos and comics as part of my professional portfolio.

With a bit of effort i managed to exclude the English from my classes and this gave me a lot of satisfaction as an ELE teacher. I no longer work in that university, but I hope to soon have another opportunity to put into practice all that I have learnt in the advanced course for ELE teachers.