Ming Chuan University (Part 2)
Ming Chuan offers 2 regular terms each year, as well as a Summer School for students who fail or otherwise need to make-up credits. Each term, we are assigned classes by Dolly, the scheduling lady, according to our interests and availability. If you have the seniority, you can ask Dolly to give you certain classes. For example, I like to teach Composition, so Dolly assigns these classes to me. This is a poor example since generally no one volunteers to teach Composition. More popular are the evening school classes offered for working Taiwanese. This would be what we refer to as 'night school' in the West. The students are older, more motivated, and generally more appreciative of the teachers. Our teachers fight for these classes, and only the most senior teachers get them.
Most classes are 2-hours long with a 1-hour lab attached to them. Most teachers teach their own labs, but sometimes (like for me last year), first-year instructors will have their labs taught by Chinese assistants. This means that if you have a 12-hour schedule, you are teaching between 6 and 4 different classes. The DAE classes that we sometimes teach are 2 hours long.
Almost all the classes taught by the English Language Center are for non-English majors. These classes are taught using the Practical English series, which the school mandated we write. The books are very poor quality and extremely unpopular among both students and instructors. We are pretty free to use the book in what ever way we want, including imaginative ways quite unrelated to their content. Not using the book is not a problem per say, except that knowledge of the contents of the book will be necessary to pass the university-wide tests we administer twice a term.
Classes are very large. Some may be as large as 70 students, but they are more likely to be between 50 and 60. DAE classes are usually between 20 and 30. If you have 6 two-hour classes of 60 students that would mean your student load could be almost 400 students. This is a huge amount of marking, and there is very little time available for individual students. Compounding the problem is the fact that students are taught according to their major, rather than their level of ability. In one class you might have students who are nearly fluent and others who can't speak a word.
My experience has been that teachers who view themselves as 'classroom' teachers have a great deal of trouble with this system. That doesn't mean that some teachers are not better than others or that the best teachers don't stand out under these conditions. My experience is quite the opposite, but the conditions that teachers find themselves in most of the time make it difficult to feel the kind of fulfillment that most educators how to get from their job.
5:28:35 AM 
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