Are you starting your classes with a warm up? Warm ups are not ways for you to kill precious minutes at the start of class, instead, they are extremely useful tools to start the class off on an energetic note and get the class thinking in English.

It is important that your warm ups get students both excited and using the target language as much as possible. Here are some warm ups that usually receive top marks from students:

1. Play a song, pass the ball

Pass the ball… or a plush toy, or a beanbag. Preferably something that won’t send anybody to the hospital if an accidental ricochet were to occur.
This warm up is simple but almost always gets entire classes thrilled to be learning. All you have to do is pick a song (the latest pop hit that your students would be familiar with), toss a ball to a student and then urge them to pass it to another student.

Students will quickly understand that the point is to get rid of the ball as fast as possible. Then, at the right moment, you stop the music. The student holding the ball must answer a question, read a line from a story, anything that has to do with English. Repeat the process for a few minutes (or longer if the class is particularly enthralled) and even get involved yourself if you can.

2. Category List with Spoons

Split the class into two (or three, or four, go wild!) teams and designate spots on the blackboard for each team to write on. Write the numbers one to five in a list in each team’s section. Then write a topic at the top of the blackboard. The topic can be anything, but be sure to make it general enough that there could be many options to choose from, like music genres, countries, school subjects, or whatever you’ve been teaching them recently.

Choose a student from each team to come to the blackboard and act as “writers”. Place spoons equal to the number of teams minus one within a fairly equal distance from each writer. When you say “GO”, the writers must write five things related to the topic on the board as fast as they can. Encourage the teams to shout answers to their writers if they’re not already in a frenzied, English-speaking state.

When the writers are finished they must grab a spoon. Count the number of correct answers for each team, awarding points for each one. The team who didn’t grab a spoon does not have their points counted. Play three or four rounds, alternating writers. Students have a great time and they’re shouting in English for most of the warm up!

3. Describe the Picture

I’ve put a little twist on the classic describe-a-picture warm up.

First, show the entire class a picture. Make sure it has lots of little details in it, preferably one where you could spend a good minute or so describing every last detail to your friend. Then, take the picture down and tell the students to describe what they saw to their partner. Give them about 30 seconds.

Now, here’s the twist. Split the class into two teams and divide the blackboard in two. Choose three students randomly from each team to come up to the blackboard. Place a piece of chalk in each student’s hand and tell them they have to write down as many things they saw in the picture as they can in 30 seconds (or one minute).

Again, teams can shout answers to the writers. When the time is up, ask the students to sit down and reveal the picture again. Give points for everything they got right; no extra points if the team repeated a word. The team with the most right answers is the winner!

4. Hot Seat

This is what I consider to the be the mother of all warm up games. It gets everybody involved, it is great for reviewing vocabulary, and it ramps up excitement levels to maximum capacity. And there is very little prep involved!

Have a list of vocabulary words prepared. Bring a chair to the front of the classroom. Split the class into two teams and have one student from the first team sit in the chair (the “hot seat”) facing the class. Make sure he/she cannot see behind them. Start a timer (one minute) and write the first word on the board.

The team must say things related to that word in order to elicit that word from their teammate sitting in the hot seat. Once the student guesses correctly, write the next word. Continue until time runs out. The team with the most correct guesses at the end is the winner!

I’ve used all these warm ups in my classes with great success. I’d like to wish everyone good luck in all your teaching experiences, and have fun during this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity in one of the fastest developing countries in the world. Zaijian!

Ah, it’s September and the hallways of schools across the country are filling with millions of eager students getting ready for another fruitful year.

If you’re a new teacher in China, or a returning teacher at a new school, you’re probably just like those students who are making the jump from primary to middle school or from middle to high school: coping with the challenges of a brand new environment.

It can be scary, especially if it is your first time in a public school in a vastly different country. Luckily, there have been thousands of teachers who have experienced the same situation before, and we won’t leave you out to dry. Here are some tips to ensure that your first time at your new school will be smooth sailing.

Give gifts to your headmaster and contact teacher, and start to build relationships with your colleagues

Always remember that you are a guest in the school, and to show your gratitude to the headmaster for their kind invitation, prepare a small gift for him or her. Something unique from your hometown always makes a great present.

Additionally, you will want to provide a gift for your contact teacher as well. This way, you ensure that you and your contact teacher will start off on the right foot, and that they will (hopefully) feel obliged to help you as much as possible throughout the school year.

Equally as important, make sure you are saying hi and being friendly to all your coworkers, and sitting with them during lunch. Often, you will be the only foreigner at the school and they will want to get to know you better.

Plus, it will make it a whole lot less awkward when you need to ask them for favours or advice. Imagine how embarrassing it could be if you needed to ask your coworker something important but you’re drawing a blank on their name!

Walk around your school and take note of where the classrooms are

Picture this: it’s your first day of classes. You strut around confidently with your schedule in hand. You hear the warning bell and you start striding to your next class.

Only, you start to realize you’ve been down this hallway already. Twice. And those classrooms? You don’t even teach that grade. Before you know it the bell has rung and you walk back into the office, defeated, begging your coworker to show you the way. I didn’t need to imagine this: it really happened to me on my very first day.

A little tip to avoid this situation: before the first day of school, walk around the hallways and take note of where all the classrooms you will be teaching in are located. Then, practice walking to those classrooms in the order of your class schedule. Do it several times. Muscle memory is a powerful phenomenon, and it could mean the difference between extreme punctuality and dragging your feet back into the office after the bell has gone.

Familiarize yourself with the students’ English curriculum

Make sure to ask your contact teacher for a copy of the English textbook the students will be using. A responsible teacher will constantly be updating himself or herself on what materials the students are learning about, and will adjust their lessons or teaching methods accordingly.
The great thing about the textbook is that it is full of material all ready to use! You can use it as a guideline to prepare your first few weeks of lessons with or you can take the words, grammar points and phrases and make a fun game out of it! The choice is yours, be creative.

Have a well-organized desk

Cluttered desk, cluttered mind. It can be difficult to focus if your desk is covered in things that you barely use.

Simply organizing your desk can make you more focused on your work and decrease your stress. Being the proud owner of a clean desk can help you feel more comfortable during what is likely to be a stressful first week. Before you even begin teaching, make sure to buy a file organizer and a pencil cup. You’ll be surprised how drastically you can cut down on clutter with just these two items.

Say “yes!” to school requests

Often, teachers will ask if you want to join them to play some sports or to start an after-school English club for some eager students. My suggestion: always say “yes” to these requests.

By saying “yes”, you are showing the school that you are not just some foreign teacher who teaches classes and then goes home, but that you are an active member of the teaching community.

In addition, by getting involved outside the classroom, students will begin to see you as more than just a teacher, and a few troublesome students might try harder in class because they see you making an effort outside class to find common ground with them.

One of the most daunting issues to overcome when living in China is the dreaded language barrier. Sometimes, trying to express the simplest of things can be exhausting if both parties can barely squeak out a basic sentence in each other’s mother tongues.

But now, there’s hope! Modern technology has greatly enhanced our opportunities to learn new skills, and learning Mandarin Chinese has never been easier. There are hundreds of helpful apps out there that you can download on your phone to study Chinese on the go. Your half-hour commute on the metro will not only be educational, but it will also fly by as you have fun mastering what you thought was impossible to learn just a few months ago.

Though there are many apps to choose from, these are a few of the ones I have found to be most effective for quickly improving your Chinese. Better yet, they’re free!

Pleco

The gold-standard when it comes to English-Chinese dictionary apps, Pleco is one of the most complete and versatile apps for Chinese learners at all stages. Pleco can work offline, so you’ll be able to make yourself understood in even the most remote, wifi-less locations.

A great feature of the app is the Optical Character Recognizer, which you can purchase as an add-on. It provides instant translations simply by pointing your phone camera at a set of Chinese characters. In addition, the app allows you to hand-write characters in case you don’t know the correct pinyin.

Du Chinese

A great app for Chinese reading, Du Chinese is packed with convenient features to maximize your reading ability. It updates frequently with new short stories, and with six levels ranging from Newbie to Master, you’ll never run out of topics that pique your interest.

Open a story and you’ll quickly notice the many cool features included. Use your thumb to scroll over the words and get an instant translation at the top. You can even play a voiceover of the story and adjust the speed to match your listening ability, or turn the pinyin on or off to test what you know.

To improve your vocabulary, you can simply long press on an unfamiliar word to save it to a word bank. Later, you can open the word bank to take a vocabulary test that uses spaced-repetition to reinforce your memory. As of today, this app is currently only available on iOS.

Memrise

Memrise is one of the first apps I used when I began studying Chinese three years ago, and I still rely on it today. It has managed to build a supportive community of like-minded people who create hundreds of courses with topics they think will be useful for their fellow language learners. Courses include simple topics like verbs, animals, how to read a menu in Chinese, and more complex ones like HSK exam preparation.

The main focus of Memrise is (you guessed it!) memorization. This app pioneered the spaced-repetition learning method which involves reviewing words between increasing intervals of time to better retain information. Using this method, I was able to learn a huge amount of words in just a short period of time. Plus, it’s actually kind of fun!

Quizlet

Quizlet is essentially your very own quiz creator. The great thing about Quizlet is that you can customize your quizzes to learn exactly what you want to learn. Want to learn the names of exotic Chinese foods (凤爪 – chicken feet!)? Or perhaps you’ve got a big exam coming up and need to cram 57 new vocabulary words? Make your own quiz for it.

Once you input the words and phrases you want to memorize into your customized quiz, Quizlet will transfer them into several methods for study, including flash cards, writing practice, and a matching game. It’s a college student’s dream app!

And always remember, the key to achieving anything is persistence. Keep at it and you’ll go from Newbie to Master in no time. So what are you waiting for? Download these apps and get studying!

When teaching English in China, you always need to be on your toes. In the nearly three years I have been here, there have been times when I’ve been asked to teach a lesson without much prior planning. The computer mysteriously malfunctioned, another teacher fell ill, somebody told you last-minute your schedule changed; the reasons are varied and countless.

Now, don’t worry, this situation hasn’t happened too often, but it always helps to keep a few of these items at your office desk in preparation of a worst-case scenario, or just to make your classes run more smoothly:

1. A die (or dice)

A large, soft six-sided die can add fun and the element of chance to any activity. Students can pass it around the room while you clap or play music, and when you stop, whoever has the die must answer the question or speak. Or you could write six questions on the board and have a student roll the die, answering the question that matches the number they rolled. For extra fun, you could even combine both activities, or come up with countless others with just a six-sided die.

2. A call bell

A simple call bell, like ones you see at reception desks, can make games more exciting. Position two students on either side of the bell and call out a question. Watch the students scramble to ‘ding!’ the bell to answer your question! You can also use it to have students signal when their team is “finished”, or to begin a game or activity.

3. Sand timer (or some sort of timer)

Small sand timers can help you keep track of how much time you are spending on each activity. During group work for example, instead of shouting out “5 minutes left!”, you can simply flip over a sand timer so students have a visual representation of the time they should beat (and man, do they really want to beat that sand timer!) Keep different sizes depending on which activities you do: bigger ones for lengthier group work, and smaller ones for short rounds of a game.

4. Textbook for the grade level you teach

When in doubt, check out their English textbook and make a game from what you know they are learning. They are more comfortable with this material and will likely be more engaged and willing to participate. Simple games you can play are Pictionary or Hot Seat with their new vocabulary words, or you can take grammar patterns and vocabulary and have them write short, funny stories or sketches with them and have them read out loud or perform in front of the class. You will be surprised at how many more students will have confidence to speak because they already have some foundation with the material.

5. Sticky ball

Who doesn’t love good old fashioned physical activity in the classroom? An inexpensive sticky ball can make students’ hands shoot up, eager to chuck that bad boy against a target you have drawn on the blackboard. Divide students into teams and keep track of points scored. To make it more perilous, you can add a spot where if they hit it, their team loses points, or has to switch points with another team!

6. Cup (to be filled with your choice of caffeine)

Being a teacher can be tiring, especially when you have to get up early in the morning to teach first period, or when you have to teach five classes in one day. Do yourself a favour and always keep a mug handy at school to provide yourself with jolts of energy, whether that be by coffee, tea, or (for some teachers) Coca-Cola. Soon you will have enough sugar pulsing through your veins to match the energy of your students, and that can make your day go by much more smoothly.

7. Pillow

The long lunch break was invented for a reason: siesta time! Instead of resting your head on your hard, flat desk or your bony arms, purchase a small pillow or neck pillow you can place on your desk at school. You will be well-rested for those afternoon classes where students can be just a tad more distracted and itching to go home.

8. A USB with appropriate movies on it

I would like to preface this by saying movies should only be used as a last resort, and should not be a replacement for hard work and a lesson that gets the students speaking English. That being said, movies are entertaining, students like them a lot, and some will be able to get some listening practice out of it. Sometimes it helps to give the students a break after a couple months of hard work. Just make sure the movies are age-appropriate: you probably don’t want to show Cars 2 to a high school class!

One of the first things we learn when we begin to learn a language is how to say “thank you.” This useful phrase can make us appear both charming and refined when interacting with people who barely know you and barely speak your own language. In English-speaking countries, it has become so commonplace that we use it for just about any sort of favour, no matter how trivial, and to not use it would be inviting a glare and a hiss. So naturally I brought my western formalities to China and said “xiè xiè” (thank you) nearly every time someone did something nice for me, from giving me a gift to handing me a pair of chopsticks, thinking I was being my good ol’ polite self. However, I quickly discovered that in China, more than a couple ‘thank you’s can be too much of a good thing.

The first time someone made me aware of how polite I was being was in my neighbourhood gym, where grunting is usually the preferred method of communication. Let’s look at how an interaction entirely in Chinese at my gym went:

Trainer: Your Chinese is quite good!
Me: Thank you!
Trainer: Here, let me help you.
*I do a set of bench presses while the trainer spots the weight*
Me: Thanks!
Trainer: You’re welcome.
*I finish another set*
Me: Hey, thanks again!
Trainer: You westerners sure like to say thank you a lot.
Me: Does it sound weird?
Trainer: I know many foreigners like to say thank you for most favours, so I understand why you would as well. But most Chinese people, we would never say thank you so much!

When the trainer said that, my mind immediately raced through previous interactions I have had with other Chinese people and conversations between Chinese friends and colleagues I have eavesdropped on. Come to think of it, I didn’t recall hearing very many “thank you”s being exchanged. In fact, to many Western ears, it may even sound like they were being rude to each other!

So, why don’t Chinese people say thank you as much as westerners do?

Intrigued, I asked the trainer why Chinese people do not sprinkle the phrase “thank you” as liberally throughout conversation as we westerners are so accustomed to doing. She explained that, even when talking to a stranger, the use of the phrase “thank you” serves to create a distance between two people, and implies that you would rather keep the relationship formal instead of friendly. Chinese people usually reserve “thank you” for very large favours, or when gifts are being given; it is rarely dropped between friends and family. A favour is usually expected to be reciprocated in the future, so in lieu of a verbal expression of gratitude, an action will nearly always speak louder than words. Though this cultural difference is slowly being changed with increasing western influence, it is still important to remember that when Chinese people don’t say thank you or when they find it odd when you do, it is not entirely rooted in rudeness or politeness, rather it is more likely due to differences in the way East and West perceive and reciprocate actions.

So, when should we use “xiè xiè” (thank you)?

Between close friends and family, “thank you” should only be reserved for very large favours or gifts (sorry, passing the salt doesn’t warrant it). Between co-workers and acquaintances, it can be used a little more often but should not feel excessive. Treating you to lunch would be an example of when to say it, with the expectation that you will treat them to lunch at some point in the near future. With strangers, it is okay to say thank you if they help you out, however, I rarely hear it being said to convenience store or supermarket cashiers. Basically, learn by observation, and you will pick it up quickly.
These are just a few tips on “thank you” culture in China. As a foreigner in China, it is always worth it to adapt to local customs as it will bring you closer to other people. On the other hand, as a foreigner in China, people don’t expect you to be able to grasp every little cultural nuance, so why not just be your polite self and say thank you when you feel the need to? After all, some people may find it charming.