Having trouble reading Chinese...

[SeekerOfPeace]

Well, for those who don't know, I teach English in China.

Unfortunately, this semester is quite stressful for someone who has a tendency to be anxious like my good self.

Why?

Because the book I am to teach is mostly in Chinese. This makes my job twice as hard as I'm:

A. Not a native speaker

B. Never studied grammar at University, all I got was my one-month TEFL.

The book is actually well designed, but it was conceived for Chinese teachers!

This means that if there's something I don't quite understand about some explanation in the book, I have to look on the Internet for hours.

I've started translating the thing but I've got a really hard time getting the meaning of sentences.

Here's one I've tried to translate:

这是布朗先生, 他的发明帮助了许多残疾人

"This is Mr. Brown, whose invention had helped hundreds of disabled people."

Now the grammatical explanation is really giving me a hard time to translate. I've managed to write each 汉字, identify each of them:

此句考定语从句的引导词，先行词是人，关系代词中只有 “whose” 此有功能。

Okay, this is how I would translate this:

"This sentence study the attribute of the subordinate clause leading word. The antecedent here is the man (Mr.Brown). The connection pronoun can only be "whose" who has a function."

Ok I know my translation is really poor but I'm really struggling here.

I would really appreciate it if someone could help me out, because I'm getting tired of sending 5 or 6 hours daily to prepare my classes so I know what I'm talking about.

*fingers crossed*

[liuzhou]

Throw the book away and get on with teaching.

You are not there to "teach the book", but to teach the language.

Few foreigner teachers use Chinese textbooks, even if they can read them.

[SeekerOfPeace]

I'd like to see you saying that to my boss's face.

I've told my boss countless times that I'd rather teach the language myself, to no avail.

He told me that all the universities and colleges in China are teaching this book and that I have to do it too.

In case you're wondering, the book is:

21st Century Practical College English

He said that I have to follow the syllabus the school has issued, which means that I have to teach the book.

The problem is that the students were always taught English in Chinese, so they don't even know what the word "period" or "comma" means. They know the Chinese meanings but not the English ones.

Teaching clauses and more advanced sentence structure is rather difficult when the students have almost no knowledge of English grammatical jargon.

What I would like is to take the time to lay the foundations, explain basic terminology and move on from there but I can't, I'm not allowed to.(sh)

[gato]

SeekerOfPeace, you are French, right? It seems from your postings that your English is probably just as good as most native English speakers teach in China, so don't worry about it. You probably should get a good grammar book written in English so that you don't have spend 6 hours researching on the internet every day.

If you can't find a grammar book for now, try these sites:

http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/

http://www.ucalgary.ca/UofC/eduweb/grammar/

http://www.grammarbook.com/

这是布朗先生, 他的发明帮助了许多残疾人

"This is Mr. Brown, whose invention had helped hundreds of disabled people."

此句考定语从句的引导词，先行词是人，关系代词中只有 “whose” 此有功能。

Okay, this is how I would translate this:

"This sentence study the attribute of the subordinate clause leading word. The antecedent here is the man (Mr.Brown). The connection pronoun can only be "whose" who has a function."

What is the scope of the class and the background of the students? I assume you are teaching in English. Are all the grammatical explanations in the book written in Chinese?

In your sentence above, "whose" is used as a relative pronoun, referring to the antecedent Mr. Brown. The sites I referred to above have some examples.

[SeekerOfPeace]

Thanks for the encouragements, seriously.

I got a few grammar books. I'm learning quite a lot (you would hope so after spending 5 hours a day reading stuff). I'm just getting tired and feeling a bit burned up from spending so much time studying and preparing classes.

The thing is that I've been teaching for only 4 months so it's one h*** of a challenge.

As far as the students are concerned, it's hard to say. I teach in a business college. Most of the students that end up in my college didn't have the scores to get into university. The other teachers keep saying that we have the worst students (academic wise).

The thing is, some students don't know their alphabet whereas other students can hold a conversation. So their knowledge is really uneven, but I think that's a reality in most if not all classes.

The classes range from 35 to 65 students.

I understand why the answer is "whose", I was trying to polish my translating skills. But thanks for the links, I will definitely check them out.

What I basically have to do is teach a new text every week. This includes the new words, the pronunciation and the grammar. Only sometimes it's kind of hard (due to my lack of teaching experience) to evaluate what is it exactly that I have to teach in the text.

I've been browsing for a while to find some different and more interactive ways to teach those texts, but haven't found anything really practical so far.

As things are now, I'm more lecturing than anything else and I would like the students to participate more. Don't get me wrong, they have plenty of fun and I consider my classes to be funny and interesting. But I'm just so burned out spending so much energy.

I would really like for the students to participate more but they just don't. The problem is that they were always taught English in Chinese, which is really not helping. It really grinds my gears how English Chinese teachers always teach in Chinese. It just seems so absurd.

This pretty much means that their knowledge of English grammar is decent as long as it is referred to in Chinese. If you start talking about nouns and vowels and consonants, in other words, if you start talking in English, they're at the stage of infants. I know because I'm also teaching three young pupils who now know more grammatical jargon than my 18-19 years old students.

The more I'm thinking about it, the more I just want to lay off the book for a while and start from scratch, starting with vowels and consonants all the way to more advanced stuff.

Just to give you an idea, suppose I give them some practice for the CET. Some of them get most of the answers right on paper. But when I give out the explanations, they're completely lost because they can't understand English terminology.

[fayetian]

Few foreigner teacher like you teach this kind of lesson, I think. Most of them teach listening and speaking courses, sometime teach without books or with book in english. It’s really difficult for you. I can imagine. Can’t they offer you an English version, or assign a Chinese teacher to help you?

[SeekerOfPeace]

They can't give me an English book.

On the other hand, I do have Chinese assistants.

The thing is, the whole class is supposed to be English immersion. I don't really want to explain some grammar, observe that the students don't understand and then ask the Chinese assistant to do the job. This would go back to the old ways of teaching in English (teach everything in Chinese).

But If I do teach some grammar, I would've to go all the way back at the beginning. That wouldn't do because the CET would test them on more advanced grammatical topics than the basic ones.

[tlevine]

Maybe you could have a student read it for you and figure out what the main topic is and just teach that or have students just ask questions about what they don't understand and work from there. I have a feeling that neither of these ideas will work, however, based on the stereotype I have of Chinese students.

[gato]

The thing is, the whole class is supposed to be English immersion. I don't really want to explain some grammar, observe that the students don't understand and then ask the Chinese assistant to do the job. This would go back to the old ways of teaching in English (teach everything in Chinese).

It sounds like that there's more to the class than just grammar. Maybe use your Chinese assistants when you are doing grammar and use English for other things (like discussing reading materials)..

[imron]

Maybe spend 20 minutes one class going over all the basic/important English vocabulary - verb/noun/adjective/vowel/consonant/etc. Then tell them that you expect them to learn all of this vocab and that at some random lesson in the future you're going to test them on all of it so they'd better learn it (maybe even tell them you're going to put some of it on the final exam). Follow that up with a test the following week, and maybe another one a few weeks later.

[SeekerOfPeace]

Thanks for the replies, you guys are great.

Tlevine:

You're right about the questions. Chinese students pretty ask no questions. It's a cultural thing (not all of them but most of them).

But thanks for the suggestion.

gato

Yeah, that sounds like a good idea.

I think I could start with the Chinese teacher teaching all the grammar and then move on from there. Add a few vocabulary words each class until they know enough for me to teach them grammar.

Imron:

That's also a good idea.

As for as the testing is concerned, I'll have to check. The final exam is the CET, so I don't have any control over that.

But I do have some power over their final scores. I think it's something like 10%. I'll have to check.