No textbook, no curriculum, no communication

I'm set to return to China in a couple weeks and I'm once again stressing about what to do in class after my medical "vacation" is over. There is no textbook  or specific recommended curriculum. We were given some sample syllabuses but the topics were kind of odd and unspecific sounding and I really wouldn't know how to try to implement them. I'm teaching freshman and sophomore English majors, and a couple large elective classes. The head of the English department told the foreign teachers that we should work together to come up with the course content, which was reassuring, but then I talked to the teacher who's been there for decades and she said they never really do that. I asked another for input and she advised me to visit Dave's. Great, thanks, that's a totally novel idea and oh so helpful.

I have no idea what the students are covering in their other Chinese taught English classes, which would be helpful. I sincerely want to do a good job, and I'm not an idiot, but everything I can find online that would seem suitable seems to require at least some printing, which I can't really afford to do and I'm doubtful the students can either. The large 50+ classes of non-majors are especially overwhelming to think about. I really don't want to end up just doing a lot of disjointed activities.

I have gone back and read some of the older threads but I'm hoping for fresh perspectives or input from people who may not have been around then.
 
So, if anyone has been in a similar position and has advice or even sympathy, I'd appreciate hearing it.

The head of the English department told the foreign teachers that we should work together to come up with the course content, which was reassuring, but then I talked to the teacher who's been there for decades and she said they never really do that.

I'm not sure why that would be reassuring. That's department speak for "figure it out yourself".

I asked another for input and she advised me to visit Dave's. Great, thanks, that's a totally novel idea and oh so helpful.

Dave's has some lesson planning ideas.

For other lesson plans you've seen that use handouts, you can use the ideas to teach without lesson plans and/or modify them to work as a PPT.

You need to gauge the level of your students before you can properly plan for them. Ask them questions. See how they answer. Get a feel for their level. Be careful not judge their level base off the students that talk most. As k students directly rather than asking a general question to the class.

You could prepare a simple pronunciation class based on the phonetic symbols. The students know them and all levels could use practice and most are interested in this and it requires little thinking on their part. After the first class you will have a better idea what kind of lessons to plan.

You seem to have a low opinion of the other foreign teachers. I'm not sure what you expect from them.

Yeah, in the majority of teaching jobs in china, you are left on your own to do the planning and deciding what to teach.

Before I came I came up with a great course plan. I had this arc, and I had lessons all relating to other lesson and it was going to crescendo in an amazing orgasmic final which would reinforce everything they learned. It was a creative masterpiece. Then, on the first day of class I realized it was totally inappropriate for every single one of my students. So I wasted hours and hours of my time.

So, go week by week with the planning so u can get a feel for how they do or you'll just waste your time too. Just google "english class in china" or "ESL lessons" and you'll find plenty of material on the internet for lesson ideas.

And don't depend to your co-workers. They're probably lazy idiots with boring classes, haha.

agreed, Dave's does have a lot of useful resources. It's a pretty good place to go (and not the only) when you are stuck in your lesson planning and need a new idea, a new tool with which to teach a difficult grammar point or something. But designing a syllabus? That's something else.

First determine the course objectives; the college's and yours. What do you want the students to be able to do upon completion of the semester? To achieve a given benchmark on TOEFL/TOIC/IELTS/whatever? That's a measurable result. Your grading criteria for examinations and assignments should be straightforward to determine and easy to explain to students and college administration alike. Even when I have not been given clear course objectives by an employer, I use IELTs band descriptors as my grading rubric. Depending on my needs anaysis the first couple of classes, I try to achieve a specific band result with most of my students.

Or are they just expected fill time and say they've practiced English? That's a recipe called no doofus left behind, and its a recipe that's popular in most Chinese kitchens colleges and unis. In that case, you may as well forget about makng a professional job of it. No sense casting pearls before swine. Satisfy yourself with doing a more than competent job of managing classes while putting out random lessons on whatever interests you at the moment, and perhaps get a handful of students practicing a few vaguely language or work related skills. Make it up as you go along. Or, if you really want to give your syllabus some structure, get a set of books (I recommend Jack Richards' Interchange series, but there are others) and just copy that material. Shamelessly. And don't be afraid to let your grading criteria be based on such measurables as who you'd like to go out for a beer with, who pisses you off in class, who has a pretty smile and who honestly tries to learn something. That's what the other instructors are doing.

I do sort of get the feeling I'm supposed to just be filling time, but I could be wrong. I've found a wealth of lesson plans and such online, I'm a pretty adept Googler, but as I said, I really can't afford to print materials for all of my classes. The larger ones also don't have a monitor, since they are non-majors, so there isn't someone I could send assignments to and expect them to ensure the rest of the class gets them to print.

I just have a hard time trying to see how they can be expected to do a lot of speaking without having some printed material to refer to, and it seems like it's impractical to try to make power point presentations for each class, but that's the best I can come up with.

Ginger,
For all the time I have been in China I have generally taught classes I have had classes without monitors and have also simply preferred to just do my own copying especially when I have multiples of the same class or might not be totally ready enough in advance for someone else to copy it. I have had absolutely no problem in getting the students to pay upfront for the copying throughout the semester. I work out how much I expect to copy which has been anything from 2RMB and 20RMB depending on the class and the amount of "content" in the class. Most of them (with one exception) had no textbook so even with the most costly case it was actually cheaper than a text book would have been and gave them a better resource because no one textbook did what was needed. No one ever had any problem with that. They expect to pay for copies (ok maybe usually through the monitor in their class). And this represents a reasonable amount to them. Trying to do it effectively without handouts would be much more challenging to teach, so I can understand your dilemma, but it is worth recognizing that there are other ways around this, including the one I have used for more than 5 years in two universities. It is a lot for the teacher to pay for all the copying, but not too much at all when it is spread over all the students. I usually simply appoint a monitor (or simply class assistant) for the class and get them to do things the monitor might usually due, like collecting the money, collecting homework, and those sorts of things, so I don't need to worry about them. It is usually not too hard to find one student in the class who is happy to do it for you.

teacheraus, thank you for the kind, helpful reply, it's appreciated. At the start of the semester, when I'd talked to the teacher who directed me to Dave's, I asked about printing, and she said she didn't really use handouts. I wasn't sure if I was just being dense and there was some obvious way to do that that was easy and effective, or if that just requires a great deal more experience than I have. I'm leaning towards thinking it's the latter. It hadn't really occurred to me that I could just ask them for money, I'm still trying to figure out what's considered normal and appropriate. While I have nothing against the other teachers, I really didn't have much opportunity to discuss anything with them in any detail.

You're going to have problems with this job - not because of the teaching (you'll work that out), but because your employer hasn't hired you to teach and you clearly think you have been hired to teach.

Every course in every college in China has a textbook attached to it.  No textbook is a tacit admission by the department that you have no value to the institution, they don;t care what outcomes you produce and they have no idea what they want you to actually do.  The students are going to assume that this is a waste of time as well because how can they learn anything if there isn't a textbook?

Sounds a bit bleak but that's my honest opinion.

I appreciate honesty, bleak or not. I suppose the up side is it's probably next to impossible to get fired... Probably no reason to be so stressed about it.

I'm going to take the advice to just go week by week instead of trying to do a lot of detailed planning in advance, and plan to solicit funds for printing. I'll also try to locate a textbook.

One thing I have done this semester is to ask the students to invite me into  their class QQ group - one of the other teachers here formed his own QQ group for each class with similar results. This has been great as all ss are members and I now send info to them with just one email and all students get the message. This has saved on copying and everyone can access stuff on their own phones.  I have sent class notes, homework and reminders with great results, they know what we are doing, what they need to know for tests etc.

I have a text but the non-English majors don't like it as it is too advanced for most of them, so I have gone with an online text and my own notes. Never thought I would love QQ but what a great asset it's been this semester.

I love the QQ solution. Among other things, it can cut the cost of copying because you can send stuff as attachments and send hyperlink URLs and such. We are hardly the paperless society yet, but sometimes high tech can be smart after all.

I also use QQ as well. However the students having electronic access to me has led to more of them making excuses to not come to class, etc.

In terms of giving out and receiving assignments however it's a breeze. I can type faster than write long hand, and all assignments can be tracked for timeliness, and nothing ever "gets lost."

Forgive my ignorance, but is there an English version of QQ? The site I found appears to only be in Mandarin. I saw QQ chat for facebook, but I'm assuming that's blocked.

Forgive my ignorance, but is there an English version of QQ?

Yes. QQ International. It doesn't have all the features as the Chinese version but it gets the job done.

The handouts thing seems to be a common and ridiculous thing at uni in China. It was the same at my job in Italy despite much smaller classes, they just didn't want to shell out for paper and printing for every student to get one or more bits of paper for every class.
ppts and putting worksheets online on kanbox are a good solution, they do all have computers. One trick I've been doing this year has been getting students to use their camera phones to take a picture of the handouts that I display on the ppt
In class materials for group work won't cause any fuss printing in the office if it's just a couple of sheets of paper. I used to laminate the good ones so they were reusable and it also stops them scribbling on them