What to do about students' mobile phones?

[carol]

Does anybody out there have ideas on how to cope with mobile phones that keep on ringing in lessons?

thanks

Carol

[Obnoxious]

I might be stating the obvious here, but... have you tried asking them to turn them off?

[sleeper]

I usually tell them that they get one warning.

If it rings again, I get to call my friends in the United States/UK/Japan on their phone. I've never had to do this, as usually students turn blue when their phone rings even once.

[chosimba]

Set the rule that mobiles are switched off in the classroom....and be consistent with this.......

[Peter Easton]

Ridculous.

Who gets bothered by mobile phones, the students or the teachers?

The answer is us, the teachers. Chinese students don't even notice when a mobile goes off and in Asian culture it is acceptable to have your phone ring at any given time; in a cinema, restaurant, business meeting, funeral, you name it. We are the only ones who get bothered by it and students are never so rude as to take the call in the class, they will always go outside.

The fact is, they are the customer, they are adults (some of whom are very busy people) and it's their time - if they want to waste it on taking phone calls just let them. Teaching adults is not high school nor is it the army.

[BeginnerTchr]

I'd be discussing class etiquette with the class and trying to establish a 'norm' that phones are switched to silent ring, and that phone owners signal to the teacher that they need to leave to use the phone. The teacher agrees to always smile and nod "yes", if the class IS made up of adults. If the class is made up of young people whose phones are announcing the arrival of the 6th text message so far in the lesson, maybe the smile would drop in wattage.

This keeps the noise out, which may be a problem in the event that the class is NOT made up of Chinese people.

It also reinforces the fact that not all cultures regard the phone the same way - perhaps a discussion point?

Trisha

[wildfk]

Ridculous.

Who gets bothered by mobile phones, the students or the teachers?

The answer is us, the teachers. Chinese students don't even notice when a mobile goes off and in Asian culture it is acceptable to have your phone ring at any given time; in a cinema, restaurant, business meeting, funeral, you name it. We are the only ones who get bothered by it and students are never so rude as to take the call in the class, they will always go outside.

The fact is, they are the customer, they are adults (some of whom are very busy people) and it's their time - if they want to waste it on taking phone calls just let them. Teaching adults is not high school nor is it the army.

I tend to agree.....only I think it is part of learning English to learn about culture too and at some point I think it is a good idea to let the students know that in most "western" cultures it's bloody rude!