Personally I enjoyed teaching the younger students. They’re generally happy to see you and act excited about the smallest things, like getting a happy face next to their names on the whiteboard. The older classes can be fun as well (with the older students expect to get a lot of questions about your dating life/lack thereof or anything else they can come up with to avoid talking about subjects such as passive voice). I did find the Jr. High kids harder to teach than the younger students, though the older the student in Taiwan, the more intense his/her Chinese school schedule is so this might explain why the older kids aren’t exactly thrilled to be sitting in English class at the end of the day.
Some schools in the country will treat you like a dancing monkey; you’re there for entertainment and to make the parents happy. Upon arrival in Taiwan, I worked for a school like this for a very short time before finding a great job in Hsinchu, where I stayed one year. My second year, I was also blessed to work at another wonderful school where they treated me like an actual teacher. Some foreigners prefer to be the dancing monkey–less responsibility. However, I liked feeling like a “real” teacher even if I didn’t really know what I was doing a lot of the time. 
Parents expect their kids to learn from the teacher and if the kids aren’t learning, the teacher is probably doing something wrong. However, equal responsibility is placed on the student, something I find lacking in the United States. In Taiwan students are expected to listen to the teacher no matter if they want to be there or not. Education is highly valued. Many Taiwanese parents also take more responsibility for their children and make sure the children are doing what they are supposed to do.
Teaching ideas for younger students
I believe the younger kids are the easiest to teach. Lots of people wonder how one can teach English to a bunch of children who don’t know a single English word but for the most part, it’s not that difficult. My second year in Taiwan my kids came in knowing ZERO English and by the end of the year they were sending me text messages and reading short stories. It’s awesome seeing how fast they catch on.
Here are some ideas:
-Give them English names if they don’t have them already. Everyday write their names on the whiteboard. This is useful for delegating black or blue smiley faces next to their names as rewards (four happy faces meant a sticker on the sticker chart, ten stickers meant a prize from the bookstore) and also red sad faces for behavioral problems. When we came to the unit on animals, I would have them name animals they wanted to be for the day and then drew the animals next to their names
-Flashcards, flashcards, flashcards! You will need flashcards of all kinds. We had everything from vowel and consonant cards, to sight words, adjectives, nouns, verbs, pronouns, etc. Word flashcards are very useful for making sentences. Single ABC flashcards also come in handy and there are a lot of games that can be used with these. Make them yourself or find a unique collection at your local bookstore.
-Singing and dancing: children at this age learn a lot through music and motion. At the start of the year, we’d take the last ten minutes of class to sing, dance , and act crazy while learning the words to English songs
-Drawing pictures on the whiteboard: This was a major aspect of my teaching style and ones the kids really enjoyed. It helped them understand English words quickly.
-English only necklaces: I made little necklaces out of plastic covered cards and yarn. On the cards I wrote their names, drew each child’s favorite animal, wrote “No Chinese, English Please,” and had the kids wear the necklaces every day. If a child spoke Chinese more than three times during the class session, I took his/her necklace for the day and he or she did not get a happy face for still having their necklace on. Amazing how it worked…no child wanted to be the odd one out so this definitely helped with the language issues in class.
-Twice-weekly story time
-As reading progressed, I had the kids act out the short stories we read. They loved it!
-Lots of games! Will write more about games in the next post.
Teaching ideas for older students
The older a student, the less attention he or she wants to attract. They do not want to “lose face” in front of the group. Upper elementary and Middle School students are not the easiest to teach but they can be fun. Here are some ideas for getting them involved:
-Group work
-Educational games
-Encouraging conversations on things they like to talk about (school, how life is in other countries, what they think of their country, etc) using specific grammar points
-Having Q & A sessions using grammar points…best when students ask the questions to their peers
-Sentence racing/writing on the whiteboard using grammar point of the day
-As with the little kids, I also had a reward system in place for the older students. Instead of smiley faces, I handed out colored poker chips for things like good participation. If the student had 5 chips for the day, he or she got a check next to his or her name on a special chart. When they reached 10 checks, I went to the bookstore and bought them something useful like a notebook or a planner
Stay tuned for an upcoming post on great games to play in the English Language Learning classroom!
We use Ladybird Books in Malaysia.