A Visit to EGRC of Lishan Junior High School

           As soon as I was informed to visit a gifted class, I was that excited with high expectations to see something interesting and different. Entering Lishan Junior High School, the campus was packed by a large number of “young” students. A strong feeling came up: we belonged to different generations! Their faces were teemed with innocence, but they were vigorous.

       “Wow! It’s a mini-class,” everybody said with surprise. It was English Gifted Resources Class comprising six students. The classroom was a microcosm of a regular one, but its all-English environment was the huge distinction. The left-hand wall was decorated by posters stuck four words: Enthusiastic, Gifted, Reflective and Creative; the right-hand wall was filled with notices, newspapers, aphorism and students’ work.

The teacher, Ms. Hsu, started the class with a brief review. She asked students some questions to fresh their memories by using graphic pictures. The students were very active, answering the questions correctly and fluently. Then, Ms. Hsu played the CD of new reading part and students repeated what they heard and imitated the intonation. After that, Ms. Hsu explained the plot by paraphrasing and emphasized the usage of new vocabulary. For instance, she aided students in distinguishing American English and British English. She further related the content to students’ experiences, making the class more interesting. I found that students voiced their thoughts confidently and Ms. Hsu valued any opinions. The feature of Ms. Hsu’s teaching style is to spark students’ interests via keeping asking questions, and she even asked a question like “what’s the roof of the world?” when talking about the word “roof.” On the other hand, Ms. Hsu would require students to predict the following plot; meanwhile, students used logic and imagination to create their stories. I was amazed by this part and thought that it was worth learning to apply in my teaching. This way, students didn’t gain knowledge passively; instead, they constructed knowledge by their own.

I learned a lot but had a sense of complexity after observing the perfect class every teacher dreamed of. In the future, we can’t choose what kind of students we’ll teach, so we have to equip ourselves well to face challenge and overcome it. The approach we learned from Ms. Hsu may not fit to low-achiever or passive learners. Students will get bored by too much grammatical teaching and then start to talk with neighbors. Teachers will spend much time dealing with students’ distraction, or the class must become a chaos. Therefore, the teacher must understand students’ characteristics and adopt right method and integrate suitable material into teaching. The most important thing is to make a lesson plan in advance and prepared well. From this visit, I am wondering a question: do I prefer to teach gifted students or average class? It’s sort of a dilemma for me: it is easier to get sense of achievement by teaching gifted students, while average class can train our abilities to manage a class and face the different situation. If we prepare ourselves well, we will be qualified to teach any kind of students.

Reflection on Reading Teaching

As a whole, our presentation was not good in terms of some drawbacks. To begin with, we made a wonderful opening as a warm-up: background knowledge of General MacArthur and key vocabulary. Students in this part behaved actively and made us feel encouraged. Then, we asked students to read the entire prayer to get general idea; yet, it didn’t work so much since we saw many bewildered faces. Instead, we should give students work sheets to construct mind maps of the prayer. Next, the class went to main part which I thought there was a lot of room to improve. We originally envisaged that the content is quite easy for students, so we decided to use questioning skills to go through. However, it fell into teacher-led class for students couldn’t respond to questions right away. We also attempted to relate the content to students’ experiences. As Alice suggested, we ought to make work sheets including questions we’re going to ask and some activities like pattern practice. Moreover, we needed to cut down the main part because students may not concentrate for such a long time. Last, “4R game” was used to review the lesson. During the game, we played a song with faster tempo to initiate students’ interests and make them feel excited. Most students seemed to be involved; however, it was a sort of time-consuming. Alice later provided her opinions about playing this game which I regarded as a better and efficient method. In the end of the class, we required students an assignment and gave them tips and guidelines for implementing a theory of reading. According to this teaching, we found that it was really tough and challenging while standing on the stage. Although we made a lesson plan, managing the class is another big problem. This experience revealed a crucial issue: more classroom observations and teaching practices are significantly required. What’s more, it is essential to keep ourselves open-mined, creative, and knowledgeable during our teaching career.

Comments for Speaking Class

“It was really a live show!” With attractive voice, Harry played a successful role in speaking class. The authentic environment Billy and Harry built triggered my learning motivation as well. Furthermore, I found the website they provide very useful and interesting. Although having seen this website last semester, I still felt amazed and beneficial. As the role-play part, it was a good practice and that can aid students in applying vocabulary and sentence patterns. By the way, I am really afraid of calculation! That made me think of my experience in America. During those days, I always felt nervous when buying things since I couldn’t remember the worth of coins at first and gave the wrong one. It was also a big problem for me to count service charge every meal. What’s more, once my friend and I made a joke while ordering. The waiter asked us “soup or salad?” Since he said very quickly, we heard of “super salad” and asked him “super salad?” The waiter got confused immediately and we also felt very embarrassed. However, that was a good and practical experience for me. Through that kind of practice, my listening and speaking abilities progressed a lot.

Feedback to listening Class

Group three’s demonstration really piqued my interests and made me involved in class. To start with, the video caught my attention so that I almost forgot to complete the worksheet. It’s a kind of catch-22 situation. The teacher perhaps let students just watch the film only in the first time and then ask them to fill in the blanks in the second time. From group three’s presentation, it revealed an issue about technical problems. Sometimes we used technical aids to make whole class interesting, but we have to assure that all things are all set up in advance. That way, we won’t waste time and impact teaching process. In addition, we’ve already discussed about “repetition” in class. That is really a vast challenge for teachers. Teachers want to give reinforcement for students to remember important concepts; however, teacher ought to consider the students’ feelings: too many repetitions are sterile. All in all, we novice teachers need to practice a lot and learn from every teaching experience.

An encounter with Lishan High School

      With elation and excitement, I came to Lishan High School. As soon as I arrived at the front gate, the sign “School of the Future” drew my attention right away. An imagination came up in my mind: a fascinating school with high-technology. Walking through the buildings, I gaped at amazement by seeing significant architecture and fantastic facilities. What an ideal school I have dreamed of!

      Two students guided us to class 207, the teacher, Ms. Liu, have already been in the classroom to welcome our visiting. To my surprise, there were two female students in the class and the rest were male ones. In the beginning of the class, Ms. Liu clearly informed students that they were going to review the reading “Echo and Narcissus” by listening to the CD. After that, she asked students several questions related to the reading, recalling their memories. It was reported by Ms. Liu that Students were a little bit nervous, so she had to call their names to answer. I noticed that Mr. Liu repeated each question approximately for six times, making sure that students totally understood the question. However, repetitions seemed to be the distraction for me. Most students used their own words to respond correctly. Then, they moved to the listening part. Mr. Liu firstly played the content once, and asked students the questions printed in the textbook. When the student gave the wrong answer, she played the part again. In the end of the class, Ms. Liu helped students review vocabularies and sentence examples, and required volunteer students to make sentences on the blackboard. Students actively participated in this activity; they wrote most perfect sentences except minor mistakes. Ms. Liu told students that she would explain the differences between “worth” and “worthy of” as a closure.

     Passing lots of buildings, we reached class 308, and students were cleaning the classroom. I was amazed by the vivid pictures clung to cupboards. The teacher, Ms. Yuan, came to the class promptly; she greeted us with all smiles and soft voice. To start with, she put phrases on the blackboard which students have already learned in the lesson “Handling Stress.” Then, she passed the handout and told students that they were going to have an activity. “Write down your problems and find two consolers to give you suggestions,” Ms. Yuan said. After that, students started to work individually, finishing their parts. Ms. Yuan walked around, seeing students’ works, and asking students to share the problems they got. However, some students in the corner kept talking and didn’t pay attention to other classmates’ sharing. Next, Mr. Yuan showed some “dialogue poems” and asked students to read aloud. Students seeing those pieces, she required them create their own dialogue poems with peers. Mr. Yuan, at the same time, looked around whether students had questions or needed help. With the advent of the ring, two groups finally shared their works. Mr. Yuan said “Let’s call it a day” as an end.

     We left the classroom and came to a conference room. There were four teachers sharing their teaching experiences and giving us advice. All teachers mentioned that they spent a lot of time preparing the class and designing different activities to arouse students’ interests after class. That way, students may not feel sterile and lose motivation. In addition, they indicated that they learned a lot from students and other colleagues. Staying in different schools was a kind of training and challenge: it’s necessary to adapt to the environment and students’ properties. Furthermore, they firmly recommended developing our interests. On the one hand, we can have an outlet to vent stress. We, on the other hand, can constantly learn new things and gain knowledge. It is essential to keep in mind: live and learn.

It was beneficial for me to observe two classes and obtain lots of useful ideas. Through visiting two classes, I saw different teaching styles, well-organized procedure, and good time management. Ms. Liu and Mr. Yuan’s teaching process was fairly smooth, and they all build an all-English learning environment which made me strongly impressive. The atmosphere in the classroom was pleasant and students were involved in the whole process. Unfortunately, I didn’t see too much authentic teaching since they almost finished the entire lesson. If I had another chance, I would like to see how teachers taught grammar which was the part I really wanted to learn. To conclude, it was a very precious experience for me to recollect the life of senior high. Also, those advice provided by all teachers benefited me a lot. I will keep learning, broadening my horizon, and seeking my own teaching style.

Grammar Teaching: Communicative or Grammar Translation

This issue concerning teaching grammar was a reminiscence of my English teacher, Mr. Hu, in senior high school. He was the teacher who insisted to build an all-English environment even in grammar class. That is to say, he taught grammar through communicative approach instead of grammar translation. By doing so, there was a serious consequence occurred: low-achievers felt frustrated for they couldn’t understand what Mr. Hu said. They almost wanted to give up learning during the process. On the contrary, it was quit beneficial for advanced students. As for me, I totally understood what he taught and learned a lot as well. However, under much pressure, Mr. Hu used grammar translation most of the time since a lot of parents complained to the school. According to this situation, it reminded me that I should use appropriate approach to different learners while teaching grammar. To conclude, it’s better to use grammar translation, teaching low-achievers. For advanced learners, teachers can attempt to adopt communicative approach only or integrate both grammar translation and communicative approaches.

A Milestone of Grammar Teaching

Group two set a good example of inductive teaching approach and that impressed me a lot. Most of the teachers still used the traditional way, teaching grammar. That way, a great number of students were afraid of learning grammar since they felt very sterile and boring. However, I learned an effective and quite interesting way to present grammar teaching both in group two and Alice’s demonstration. That’s really a milestone for my thinking of grammar. Generally speaking, group two presented very well. The whole process was smooth and their goal for the whole class was clear and accurate. The teaching aids like flash they used are appealing to the students. Well put!! 

Comments for Group 1

The presentation from group one impressed me with their video. I was so surprised when the video was shown. Group one used a variety of teaching aids, such as the PowerPoint, video, flashcards, blackboard, and so on. In my opinion, group one should prepare all the flashcards in advance and put them in order. That way, the teaching process would be more fluent. In addition, the technical skills about PowerPoint still had room to improve. That’s also the part we are going to to learn and practice in this course.  All in all, I still wanted to praise for their presentation; they set a model for us and gave us a rough idea about teaching  vocabulary. When it comes to learning vocabulary, there is a reminiscence of my English teacher in senior high school. He taught me that I have to use the words correctly and precisely. That is to say, learning vocabulary is not just to recite the words but to understand the usage and collocation of the words through reading a lot of example sentences. This concept influenced and benefited me a lot.

Areas of Scientific Knowledge Foreign Language Teachers ought to be Familiar with

As foreign language teachers, they should be familiar with the language itself thoroughly and deeply. They have to start with learning the use of language correctly, and then they further realize the origin of the language. Finally, they need to know the culture of the language. Since these three parts are related to each other, foreign language teachers ought to master these areas. 

Is Teaching a Craft or a Science?

To start with, I’d like to define these two words “craft” and “science” according to the dictionary.“Science” is an organized way of making, arranging or dealing with something, whereas “craft” is the skill needed for a particular profession.

After understanding the meanings of two words, I regard teaching as a science. I think that a teacher have to be a well-organized person whenever teaching, dealing with things, or communicating with students. An organized teaching makes student learn efficiently. However, I think that teaching will become an “art” in the end. When a teacher has familiarized with the materials and students’ attributes, the teacher ought to elevate their teaching into a state of art. That’s also the pinnacle of the teaching career. I expect I can achieve this goal.