News from our grads
Peter in China
Cairns grad Peter McCabe completed his TESOL course with TI in 2004. Peter
is now on his second stint of teaching in China
and has been having the time of his life for more than 18 months.
Peter has some innovative ideas about making his classes fun and effective, and this is what Peter had to tell us last month about his teaching experiences:
"China is a big country and everything about it is big. So when I went to teach at No 1 Middle School in Bazhong, Sichuan, I was amazed to discover the school had over 6,300 students. More than double the population of my home town in Kuranda, North Queensland. I initially found facing over 70 Chinese students in each class a little daunting. I taught four grades, over 18 forty-five-minute lessons per week with the students' ranging in age from 11 to 18 years old, and it was fascinating to have contact with such a large group of young people.
I taught media production
for many years to Australian students and I was
very surprised by the similarities between the Australian and Chinese
students. Even here in remote rural China, the kids are
up to date with clothes, fashion, music, movies,
international news and sport. The biggest difference
is the timetable. The students start at 7.20am and finish at 9.30pm,
have 11 lessons a day and attend school six days a week. When I compared
school hours in Australia, five to six lessons a day, my Chinese students
thought school in Australia must be paradise. However the Chinese students
have longer holidays, just over three months each year.
Initially I wondered 'how do I teach all these students?' Coming from Australia is a big advantage. All students are fascinated by Australian geography; the deserts, the beaches, the rainforests, the Great Barrier Reef and our cities. For every one Australian there are about 65 Chinese and most of them live in apartments, so the students are amazed to learn about big open spaces and few people, houses and back yards and even the Hills Hoist. They love our animals, especially kangaroos and koalas. So, armed with lots of photos and video footage of animals, outback Australia, my friends, my house, and lots of simple everyday things we take for granted in Australia, I have many hours of teaching material that motivates and inspires students to learn English by asking questions and listening to stories associated with the pictures.
All the classrooms have a large
TV so my greatest teaching asset is a small digital
video 
camera with a photo card. I plug it into
the TV and away we go. The students offer opinions
and share their thoughts and I encourage them
to be brave and confident. Their knowledge of
grammar is excellent, however they are very shy when it comes to speaking. So
I give them small prizes like soccer, basketball
and pop star stickers for their efforts. I also
gathered short video messages from some of my
Australian students and showed them to my Chinese
students. They were fascinated and responded
by creating their own video messages which I
sent back to Australia. They were so pleased to make contact with Australian
students.
And then there's my guitar. What a great teaching tool! Everyone loves to sing and for some reason everyone in China knows My Heart Will Go On and Yesterday Once More. Music is great because the whole class sings English songs together and even very shy students have a go. They love Christmas carols and I am now attempting to teach 1500 Senior 1 students Give Me A Home Among The Gum Trees to perform at our Christmas party.
So now I have over 10,000 new Chinese friends! The students and teachers are very friendly and we have lots of fun and they are all keen to take me to dinner, go walking, visit beautiful mountain top temples, go to the movies and play table tennis. Lucky I brought my Frisbee - nobody had ever seen one before."
Peter McCabe - Teach International Graduate
