Class size in Hong Kong schools

By Dick Tibbetts, University of Macau, China

A teacher asked: “Did anybody else read the article about small classes in the November issue of Scientific American? Basically it said that class size reduction was a waste of time and money, usually because teachers changed neither their materials nor their methods to suit the new class structures. This is definitely something I agree with. How about everybody else?”

This came up in Hong Kong back in the late 80's - early 90's. They halved some class sizes because they thought it would lead to improved language learning. The teachers, as Sci American says, carried on as normal, confronting their classes with the microphone of power held in front and being as teacher centred and exercise bent as usual.

But those of us who are used to a range of class sizes tend to adapt our approach to suit the situation. If I could get my classes of 30+ down to 20 I'd be teaching in a somewhat different way. If I had them in groups of 12 it would be different again.

Hong Kong teachers seem to dislike change more than any group I've ever come across, partly because there is a lack of commitment in the profession and partly because the teachers' English is often not good enough to cope with the demands of more communicative English that are more difficult to brush aside in smaller classes.

Going to extremes over methodologies

By Eric Ross, M.A., Seibou Gakuen, Saitama, Japan

There are some things that I see not working well at my school, and others that have turned out well, sometimes better than I imagined. I just would like to get a panoramic picture of what successes others have had and how they got to those successes.

When I went the through the TESOL masters course, I heard many different professors with many different opinions on multiple methods of teaching. Not all worked, not all worked entirely well. And we need to take each culture, each educational system, each student into consideration before we pull a "brand x" method from the shelf and feel that it is going to solve all of our teaching challenges.

I think we can all agree that the goal for each one of us is to get our students to begin using English in a meaningful way. Is one method or several known methods able to definitely do that? I don't think there is enough research out there to justify a "yes" answer.

So, I hope that those who have had successes in a more communicative approach would approach things from the standpoint that "this worked for me and here is what I did..." Let's try to avoid tearing down what others are doing because we are all trying to do what we can as we have the opportunity to do it.

I want to be a good teacher, and I am sure that all of us want to be good teachers. And if we want to be, we are showing that we are not just collecting a paycheck but doing something to care for each and everyone of our students. These are people I am working with, not highly volatile chemicals. Mixing a few things is not going to cause a caustic black cloud. If some things do not work, then I move on to try something a little different.

The relativism of teaching

By Marina Malesevic-Petrovic, City College, Novi Sad, Serbia

This is what I have noticed both as a teacher and a teacher trainer:

1. Different teachers stick to different approaches, depending on their own learning experience, their TEFL /TESL education, influences and experience
2. Different students learn in different ways, depending on their age, monolingual or bilingual environment, and myriad of other factors.

Observing teachers and assessing students, I was amazed at how much was being learned under all kinds of teaching and this is the common denominator of this discussion the fact that our students are learning - no matter which approach they are being exposed to. Therefore, we, as teachers, feel confident in taking sides, depending on our own experience.

One's viewpoint on other teachers' approaches can only be the reflection of one's own capability to accept the relativism of teaching. Because of that I would like to invite each and everyone to write his/her own 10 commandments of teaching, so we can learn while teaching.