Eventually, this blog will be a description of what happens in my classroom. For now, however, I’m still in planning mode.

To be honest, I’m getting a bit nervous as the Chinese "Spring Festival" holiday (Chinese New Year) comes to an end. I’m entering a new school with students I’ve never taught before working with teachers I haven’t even met yet! Going back to F. Dee Fink’s article mentioned in Blog Post 2, I want to look at point 3 (the nature of the subject) and point 4 (characteristics of the students). First, let’s look at the nature of the course. "Oral English" seems like fun, and it should be fun for the students. However, getting shy students to speak out in class is never easy. Giving them enough practice with 28 students in a class will be another challenge. I have no idea yet how much they have spoken English in the past, so there may be very large differences in students’ speaking and listening skills. In my opinion, in order to successfully learn to speak a new language, students need to learn a variety of skills. Here are some examples: - They need to be able to accurately listen to the new language. If they can’t understand spoken English, how can they participate in a conversation? - They need to be able to produce the individual sounds of the new language. Not all sounds will be difficult for them, but I assume some will be. - They need to be able put the sounds together to make words and sentences. With English rhythm being so unlike Chinese, this may cause great challenges for my new students. - They need to be able to deal with problems or misunderstandings when trying to use the new language. - They need to be able to communicate complex meanings in the new language, using a variety of communication strategies, as they learn to speak more. If this course is to be successful, I will have to help students practice these skills and put them together into whole conversations or normal "interactions" such as role play, debate, or presentations. In Blog Post 4 and Blog Post 5, I plan to look more closely at activities I will use to try to get students practicing the above skills in English. Next, let’s look at the characteristics of the students. By this time, they will have studied a great deal of English without speaking much, possibly without listening much either. Their focus has been on tests, which play an important role in their young lives. Some students may have their own personal interest in speaking English and could be much better at communicating in English than their peers. It’s possible that some students will see Oral English as ‘a break’ and may have no interest in practicing at all. How will I show them the value of spoken English if this is the case? In their future careers, spoken English might be the most important skill to have, but they may not believe this right now when all they’ve focused on so far is written English in order to prepare for tests. The novelty of having a native English speaker in front of the class, as well as the variety of activities I am planning (see Blog Posts 4 and 5!), may be enough to keep their interest. We shall see...