I must admit that after hearing “What is your favorite color?” for the hundredth time, he wasn’t too interested in English corners. The idea was to give Chinese students a chance to talk with Americans and practice their English. Hopefully, we could persuade them to visit our training center and take classes. In theory, it was a good idea for everyone except the Americans. I can still see the shy grade-schooler being prodded by his Chinese mother to “show off” the few English phrases the boy had memorized. I felt sorry for the boy as he tried to maintain an hour-long smile and could relate to the boy’s discomfort.

After spending over 300 hours in English nooks during my 7 years in China, I found that there are right ways and wrong ways to have them. Initially we were told that if we Americans just showed up somewhere, a huge crowd of would-be English learners would bombard us with intense conversations in English. This never happened. I helped maintain English corners in libraries, bookstores, parks, schools, on a busy street, and even at McDonald’s. Each of these had to be built from scratch, but can be built into a very successful program.

We had two types of corners in English: free talks and activities. Free English conversation corners used to be effective in universities and libraries. Activity-based English corners were effective in each location, but required more work and preparation. Here are some tips on how to have a successful activity-based English corner.

1. Decide the format of the English corner. Usually we divide the English corner into 4 parts. First, we teach 8 to 10 “Frequently Used American Expressions”. These were idioms or collocations that we could act out and try to present in a vivid way. We never tried to explain the meanings, but rather tried to represent them so that the students could try to guess the meanings. Next, we would usually teach a song that had words that were easy to understand. Then we teach a cultural tip and finally we play a game.
2. Decide to enjoy the situation. I knew that if I was bored with what he was doing, my students would be too. I distinctly remember trying to teach the idiom: “You’re barking up the wrong tree.” I had a student stand on a chair, while I pretended to bark at him like a dog. We always did what we could to add some spice to the lessons, not only to keep students coming back, but also to keep us interested in the lessons.
3. Be flexible. I vividly remember teaching for two years at McDonald’s. We set aside a corner from McDonald’s and had a weekly English corner at 3:00 pm on Saturdays. We brought in a portable screen so people would know what it was about. We brought a professional sound system with two wireless microphones. Everything we had to do to try to make the English corner a success. However, many times, something went wrong. Either there was an error in the worksheet or there were no batteries for the microphones. Sometimes we would plan for 30 students and 100 would show up, and sometimes we would plan for 100 and 5 would show up. If you ever run an English corner, you will have to be willing to “ride the waves.”
4. Follow the 10% to 50% concentration rule. Usually, in China, you would look at one of my classes and divide it in half based on your level of English. Then I would take the bottom half and go up 10%. This was usually a good approach to the material. I would try to give these 40% of students the majority of my time and effort. For the top 50% of students, I would give them nuggets (not McDonald’s McNuggets) of harder English to keep them interested. Then whenever we had pair or group work, I would target the bottom 10% and try to give them individual help. Be careful. English corners in public places will appeal to everyone. It was common for our public English corners to have both kindergartners and college English teachers looking to learn some English.

I still have many good memories, and I made many friends through working in English corners.