tips for very large class size

I started my first teaching job in China last week at a middle school in Gansu. Each class has over 130 students and most students struggle with simple sentences like, "I like to____ because____". Has anyone  worked with groups like this?  What things you were able to do to make the class worthwhile for the students? I should also say that the class is oral english and that the headmaster said I can pretty do anything that I want in class.

Move fast. Engage directly with as many students as you can. Keep them paying attention to see who you'll call on next. Your job is to bring their lessons alive...so stay lively!

Never had anything that large, but you can usually get students to interact in groups. They'll also help each other that way. Give them role-plays and walk around to listen to the groups and provide suggestions. Review what you heard (any mistakes or interesting words/phrases).

I was actually going to start a similar thread just now!

My classes are not as big as that, but a couple are over 50 and while I do rely on groupwork it's good to have class exercises as well I think but every time I've done it it's been a disaster because one student gets up and talks too quietly and everyone else starts talking to each other....

That's not a class, that's a lecture.

OP: I don't envy you at all! I have 60 in every class- anymore and I don't know how I'd do it... I did speaking and listening class in uni which had 100 odd students and was a bit of a disaster.

In conclusion, I have nothing to add and don't know why I'm posting this.

In conclusion, I have nothing to add and don't know why I'm posting this.

I think that is the only conclusion to reach! I mean, there is no way to teach an activity to a class of 130 and have it be anything less than utter chaos. Even a room of 30 students can be hard to control a times.

If it were me, I would be marching myself to the office demanding smaller classes!

I agree. That is an absolutely IMPOSSIBLE number of kids to teach, especially for oral English. How can you possibly accomplish anything?

It's really too bad that this is your introduction to teaching in China.

To help the kids (and maybe maintain your sanity):
Tongue twisters. They can repeat after you for pronunciation practice. Once they get good at it, get a few volunteers to say it individually. If you can create teams, one person from each team can 'compete' against the others to see who's the best.

Do you have a way to do PPT lessons? When I taught large classes (90+, never as high as yours are) of senior middle school kids, I would create lessons I hoped were interesting, based on what their Chinese English teachers were teaching from the textbook. I used lots of pictures and tried to use the vocab from their regular English lessons. I would read a slide (one or two sentences) and then a student would read the same slide. They passed the microphone. The whole class got listening practice when I read and (minimal) individual practice reading aloud. To involve the whole class, they could all repeat what you say.

I never had any luck with groupwork...each group simply became a chatter session.
I'm with Ruth in that there's not going to be much real teaching with 130 kids. Just try to get them talking to you...and be really lively and magnetic.

That's not a class, that's a lecture.

i use a phonics course by longmans. each lesson has 6 words using a similar sound. stage 1 - drill the words.  stage 2 - i write 'spell, question, answer, sounds like, describe story'  on the blackboard. stage 3- i then walk up and down the aisles choosing students at random to use the new words in a question, description etc etc. then stage 4 - there is a sample sentnece with video i then get the kids to read it several times.  As RD said you need to keep it lively and a bit of acting is a good thing to do. You will get the kids chattering though and noise levels needs to be kept in check. showing a cartoon and stopping it every couple of minutes getting students to describe what happened works well especially if you write some words on the board that they can use. depending on the level of the class you can teach 'and then'  so the first kid says something the next kid needs to say 'and then' etc etc.
the good thing about showing  a video is at least there is some peace and quiet whilst they are watching it.

I don't envy you bipsy. That is an insane amount of students for one class and makes your job very difficult. I have enough trouble encouraging 45 students to keep speaking English, I can't imagine how over 100 goes... this year I have two classes that are 24 in size an' I think it's a great number to teach (still too big imo though, ideally 15 should be a maximum).

Do you have powerpoint? I have found that where I'd usually photocopy an activity for the students at a language school, at a university I can use a ppt and the students can all work from that. At the level you're teaching you could use ppt to provide the kids with very simple, heavily guided activities. Looking at your example: "I like to____ because____"
there are two points of language here: "I like to verb noun" and "because smtg". It might help to break this down - if the students can't understand "I like to verb noun" there's no way they're gonna understand "I like to____ because____". The second part of the sentence "because" introduces a more advanced language point that should only be introduced once the students have mastered the first part of the sentence. You could check first that they understand "I like noun" because it's a much simpler sentence, and then you could go from there.

Pictures are your friend as a teacher, especially with lower levels, you could do a lesson on fruit and have pictures of a few fruits (with the english written underneath) and ask the students to complete the sentence with the fruits they like - "I like Apples" etc. Pictures or your own mime can be used to demonstrate the meaning of verbs such as "like", I've found they work best when contrasted with pictures or mimes of the opposite meaning as well. One last thing, it can be helpful to deal with lessons based on lexical sets. For example fruits, drinks, things found at home, things found at school and so on. By dealing with each of these together it should reinforce the vocabulary in the students' minds and help them remember it better. Of course you might be able to do more than one lexical set per class, but I think one at a time is best and they should be grouped to make sense, so after foods you move onto drinks. The more disjointed the parts of a lesson are, the less likely the students are to remember each part.

And if the students know IPA, use it. At their level it is very helpful for modelling pronunciation, along with your voice as well.

That's a bit rambling but maybe it gives you some ideas. Good luck.

I think NATO has the right idea. You almost have to use powerpoint or some other sort of visual aid because otherwise 130 students, you're going to lose them fast. Putting up guided activities on a PPT and then calling individual students (although I hate to do that point and -- hey you! method, what else can you do?) to answer, so that they at least get a small chance to speak. Pictures are also an excellent idea. Kids these days love screens and visual stimulation, and really you almost have to approach this like a lecture, but with a few small opportunities for participation thrown in.

Groupwork for a class that large is probably not going to be practical either, since without monitoring, it will devolve into chatter. Even if you split them into massive groups of 10, you'd still have 13 groups to work with, and if you do a more reasonable number, like groups of 5, forget it, that's 26 groups. It will be chaos. You'll have a couple of groups where the kids are dilligently working on whatever they're supposed to be working on, a few who will be lost, and a few who won't care. Will you have Chinese teachers in the classroom with you to help with crowd control? If so, put them to good use. If you do groupwork, then make the Chinese teachers help you go around and monitor the groups and make sure they're staying on task.

The school is, of course, I almost guarantee, going to natter on about how they want the students to all have a chance to practice their spoken English, so if they do say something like that, tell them if they care about the kids' spoken English, to at least break the class into two classes of 60 or so. Even that is large! 

Good luck. To be honest, your school is really taking the piss here and I'd have no problems letting them know that. If they want to do it this way, fine, but they shouldn't expect any real language learning to be taking place.

Another idea: listening exercises. If you have a projector/computer in the room, use some internet videos and have the students answer questions about what they see and hear. Otherwise, you'll be stuck with CDs for the same purpose.

Always give handouts to go along with the exercises to ensure that students do some work (yeah, I know, most will just ignore it and sleep).

I've been working in Bangladesh, partly training teachers specifically how to deal with this problem - class sizes of 100+ are the norm there. I don't really have anything much to add to what's been said above (any of you guys want jobs as teacher trainers in Bangladesh?). I just want to reinforce message that it's not your fault if the lessons don't work. I've been dealing with teachers who've been made to feel inadequate because their lessons with 140 students are failing. It's just not fair.

I have a smiliar problem, I have classes of 50 (overall very crappy) students that I’m supposed to teach ><;
If I were you, I’d try to find out first how many hard-working people who really want to learn English are in the class. If it’s 60% or more, I advise you do a mixed approach with 50% or more of group work. If it is 30% or less, and the rest of the class just wants to sleep / write cellphone messages / do homework for other classes, I’d focus on giving those 30% opportunities to really make progress while engaging the rest every once in a while. Chinese middle school students are usually good at repeating stuff in unison, so make use of that. For example, if a students delivered a correct answer, let everyone repeat it.

With this approach, you can for example let the better (or harder-working) students write little dialogues using vocab/structures they just learned that they get to read out or write down on the blackboard. If they’re on the blackboard, you can get the class to correct their mistakes (be nice, students are usually shy and afraid of humiliation) and then get the whole class to read out the dialogue.

What also works is simplifying some jokes and then reading them out to the class as listening comprehension practises. If the students struggle, let them translate each sentence into Chinese. Prepare two or three questions about the joke, and ask the students to answer the questions in English. Let the whole class repeat the corrected answers. (I know you're supposed to teach oral English, but listening comprehension actually is a part of their exams while oral English probably isn't, so they'll be grateful for the practice ^^)

Also, a secret tip for when you’re totally burned out and don’t know what to do any more: Find out which English song is popular in the class atm and explain the lyrics to them, then sing the song with them. You will miraculously have the attention of 80-90% of your students, and if you strew in some grammar explanations, they will probably even remember those. Learning song lyrics is actually a great way to study languages and always has helped me a lot.