There are more and more students coming to learn Chinese in China. After their courses, some of them need extra tutoring or improvement. For Chinese teachers of Chinese program in China, you should pay attention to this group of students, for teaching them is neither easy nor difficult.
As the teacher of Chinese program in China, you need not worry about the textbook and the process of their learning when you are tutoring them, for their course teachers have been set when they are learning Chinese in China. This kind of students will generally have several requirements for you: firstly, they hope to complete their homework with the help of you; secondly, they hope to improve a certain language skill with the help of you, such as oral Chinese or Chinese characters.
If you are required to help students of Chinese program in China to finish their homework, it will not be that difficult. But you had better notice the teaching approach you are using. Don’t do something which is beyond your duty to do homework for your student. Although the students of Chinese program in China are not that superior and even often make mistakes, they would like to try some errors in homework, especially the students from European and American countries. They would rather be make mistakes than follow you completely. The appropriate way is: you ask them questions and guide the students and let them try to answer your questions firstly. If they answer wrongly, you can just correct them.
The students of Chinese program in China may always consult you about the problems they met in their homework, especially some place they don’t understand in the class. For example, a student of Chinese program in China once asked his teacher, “why we can say ‘我跟你见面’, but can’t say ‘我见面你’?” and “ both ‘素质’ and ‘质量’ are quality in English. What’s the difference?”
What do you think about this kind of questions? Actually, these questions can’t be count as difficult ones. It is just because that most of Chinese people never considered about these questions, therefore we can’t answer immediately. You can probably think of an answer for this question, if you have a night to think about it. But what should you do at that time?
Some teachers will tell students, “I need to go home and check this question. I will tell you next time we meet.” This kind of answers can be allowed only once. After twice this answer, your students will be quite disappointed and they won’t ask you any more after three times, for they think that they will ask in vain.
But don’t worry about this. The experienced teacher of Chinese program in China will help you to grasp some skills of answering students’ questions. If your student just wants to chat with you and practice his spoken Chinese in the Chinese program in China, it will be much easier. As long as your chatting contents can collocate with his topics, it will be OK.
One thing the experienced teacher of Chinese program in China needs to remind you is: you should let your student speak more. It is not good that you speak excitingly and make your student as audience. Your major responsibility is to listen. You should listen to the mistakes that your student makes. And you should take notes while you are listening. Write down the mistakes that your student makes on your notebook and conclude for your student finally. Only in this way, your student will have the feeling that you are a quite professional teacher.
You can’t criticize the student’s teachers arbitrarily. You can’t think that the mistakes of the student are the fault of the student’s teacher. This is an impolite manner and will influence the comments of your student to you. You should let your student feel that he is lucky to have this kind of good teacher only because of your teaching quality.