New English Teacher Looking For Advice

[danieloneil]

I am a new English teacher for a company in China, I have never taught EFL before so this is new to me. My company asked for a 6 month to a year course plan, but I am unsure how to complete it. If anyone could help me or give me advice on how to make a course outline I would appreciate it.

[jomo27]

Not a teacher.

Well, you will need to write down everything you want to teach and of course you have to know what you must do.

Are you going to teach them? I mean.... Teaching English?

[Tdol]

How many stydents are there? What are their levels and what are the expected outcomes for each level? The 6-month to 1-year parameters are so far apart that you would need to have different plans for them IMO.

[danieloneil]

The former English teacher emailed me and told me to just get 2 teachers editions textbooks and teach from those. Now I have their TOEIC scores, of course I am having trouble finding out what score means what, but at least I have a list and can figure where they are. They would like 3 groups High Middle and Low. I am thinking I may just organize them into the groups from their scores and administer my own short, multiple choice assessment to figure where I should begin. Some are fluent, some are not. And yes I am teaching them English or improving what they already know.

[Tdol]

Here are what TOEIC scores should mean: TOEIC scores: can-do table to interpret your scores

However, it doesn't test productive skills unless they have done the Speaking and Writing papers as well, so you may see people with what seem to be good scores whose productive skills lag behind.

[Tdol]

Here are what TOEIC scores should mean: TOEIC scores: can-do table to interpret your scores

However, it doesn't test productive skills unless they have done the Speaking and Writing papers as well, so you may see people with what seem to be good scores whose productive skills lag behind.

[JillinJapan]

First of all, congratulations on your new job! How exciting.
I find that (almost) no matter what level your students are, working on phrasal verbs and idioms is important. Obviously it's not something you can work on when teaching a bare-bones beginner student, but it can be easy to jump into with students who are at the right level. You will know which students can handle it, and I've found that they are usually very excited to learn idioms and find them fascinating.
Idioms are phrases are used so commonly in the US that we don't even think about it, they just flow naturally in conversation. You can spend years teaching them, there is so much to teach. And the good thing about it is that there are different levels to teach, making it easy to teach them to beginners and intermediate students.
I would definitely work phrasal verbs, idioms and general sayings into your lesson plans. The "Can You Believe it?" textbooks are extremely helpful and fun.
Conversational activities are always great for any level and they can be fun and break up the 'textbook monotony'. Learning new vocab is also important and another key element for your classes.
Think about how you learn new things and ask others how they learn. Knowing how people learn will give you a good idea how to teach. I know that I learn through memorization, repetition and testing myself, like many people. However, some people learn better through listening, reading and practicing. Get to know your students and how they learn.
In the end, you have to get as much out of teaching as they do out of learning. Teaching EFL is amazing! Jump right in, it will come more naturally than you think.

[danieloneil]

Thank you for this advice. I was actually JUST talking with a potential student about idioms and how some are harder to explain than others. His is very interested in them. So far I have met with other teachers that teach in different divisions of my company and they have all given me good advice, mainly that contrary to the company wanting me to teach during the day that most likely I will have to teach at night because students work just as hard as I do and have too much to do during the day to come to a class.