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New Zealand Education

Teaching styles

Little lectures – Lectures take up a small amount of time. In classrooms, students spend most of their time reading, writing, doing group discussions and presentations. While students are doing their work, teachers walk around the classroom and give each student .

In-depth study – Lots of time is spent on each unit for theme in classes. Instead of talking very briefly about a variety of topics, they choose several units for theme and do an . During the process, students have to do a lot of reading and analysis on the topic of study.

Analysis versus memorization – Students are not asked to memorize [many] facts or figures. Students spend most of their time reading, summarizing what they have read, and writing reports or essays. They are also encouraged to express their opinions and trained to express their opinions in an organized manner with convincing evidence.

More individual guidance – Because of the smaller class size, students get more individual guidance from teachers. Teachers spend less time talking to the whole class and more time discussing work with each individual.

Less homework – Many teachers give students time to do their homework in class. Since lectures take up little time in classrooms, students finish most of their work in class. The amount of homework is generally small. Students rarely have to spend more than two hours on homework after school.

Teachers

In New Zealand, teachers have to teach students of different year levels at the same time, because of the and the small number of students in each school. Most teachers teach students from at least three to four different year levels.

In addition, quite a number of teachers teach more than one subject. This is mainly due to the fact that many courses are , so the number of classes offered for each subject may vary from year to year. If few students choose music in one year, for example, then the music teacher may not have enough music classes to teach, so he will teach other subjects.

Vocabulary Focus

analysis (n) ---the process of studying or examining something in detail, in order to discover more about it

essay (n) ---a short piece of writing on a particular subject, especially one done by students as part of the work for a course

Specialized terms