Taipei Lishan High School visit on May 13,08 May 25, 2008

I believe students studying in Lishan High School would have an abundant and beautiful learning environment. Lishan was our second visiting school, and its campus environment was as gorgeous as Long- Men Junior High School. We met this school at 7:50, and this time was the first class beginning time for senior high students. Because this school was located in Neihu which was so far from my living place, I needed to get up earlier than usual. It also made me rememorize my high school life and did some comparison with Lishan.

Lishan truly disobeyed the traditional high school system and framework. Just took its outside appearance for instance, its school’s dimension was so huge and picturesque. Students can gain broader view sight by learning in this area. Second, through this school’s introduction we know that this school strongly prove them become a scientific, outstanding, international, and finally the world- class high school. Their educational goal is to make their students become not only a rational (scientific) but also sensible (humanistic) person. So under this learning aim both teachers and students in Lishan would integrate “science” in their teaching and learning. Not except for the English teaching, students would have the extra courses which are unique in senior high school in Taiwan’s education now to do some specific subject researches with their guide teacher. So students can already gain the ability about individual searching.

The third one would be the important on for us, future’s English teacher. Their English classes adopt the whole English teaching environment. Teachers totally speak and teach in English, and this policy can improve students listening skill and get used to the language use of English. I also discovered that teachers from my observations they didn’t focus their teaching on linguistic competence anymore. Instead, they’d like to focus the central meaning of the reading and help students get the blue picture of a unit. Teachers used graphic organizers to be one of their main teaching materials for the reading, and this method could make students construct a complete structure of reading itself. But it didn’t mean that their teaching would emphasize on the grammar and vocabulary and so on. However, they utilize the GO and combine the other learning parts together and making students know the true learning not only focus on the linguistic parts. But they should learn how to mix all the elements such as listening, speaking, reading, writing, and Gr together to attain a full English learning.

My first observation was class 109. Teacher Yuan in her class used lots of multimedia such as ppt and video to be her teaching assistants. Yuan used the ppt to review students’ vocab and meanwhile she required students speaking out each explanation of vocab. It was a good way to make students speak in English in class. Then she played the video related to the content and suitably explained the extended meaning about the video. Before the class end, she assigned two students to play a short role play whose materials were derived from the video. It really made students enjoy it and pertain the learning in the practical usage. My second observation was teacher Huang’s teaching. For me, she was an energetic teacher. I could say that her students really loved learning English in her class. At the beginning of her class she used the body language to point out today’s learning aspect. Then she used lots of ppt to give students the rough image of this unit, and she also used GO to support her main idea of reading. Her whole class was really organized and tightly. I hope I could one day did a great job as her did.

questions about lesson plan March 17, 2008

The following are some questions and answers (some are summarized from materials and some are from self view) about the lesson plan.
1. What should go into an Englishlesson?
Engage- make students interest in our lesson/teaching.
Study- focus on materials’ language, also it should cover the taught material
Activate- require students producing their own works related some knowledge taught before.
2. What is a lesson plan?
For me, lesson plan means a blueprint about the process of the whole class. Though the practical teaching wouldn’t absolutely follow the original plan, teachers still have a prediction about the class and won’t be feel very nervous and helpless before the class beginning. It can be a note or a complete plan, and they all depend on teacher’s convenience.
3. Why is planning important?
It can help teachers to clean their thought and set their goals about the new knowledge” students should learn from the lesson. Teachers also can through this work adjust the teaching order and make it more appropriate.
4. What are the principles of planning?
Aim- knows what the students’ prior knowledge is and what they need or want to know.
Flexibility-teachers should prepare some extra tasks or materials for the accidental time.
Mood- not only students but also teachers should keep a good relationship in class and make the class go on fluently.
                                                                                            

two questions from 10 language teaching approach March 3, 2008

Question 1: Which of these approaches do you hope will have more influence on your teaching in future?                                                                                                                              

I hope I can simultaneously use the communicative language teaching and affective humanistic approaches. I was under the traditional teaching environment that teachers mainly focused on learners’ linguistic knowledge but lost the attentions on their individual varieties. But actually each learner has their own learning style and personal factors influenced on their learning consequence. I would stand a position of counselor and facilitator and help learners communicate and interact in the class in TL. Furthermore, the course would be student- centered and teacher would make students discuss in their group. I assume students can trough the authentic communications gain some confidence on self English learning. I would primarily focus on learners’ TL fluency and secondary on their accuracy. I consider that students can gradually self correct and watch out their own feeling on the process of learning.

Question 2: What strategies will you use to make your teaching more effective and meaningful?                                                                                                                               

I would use cognitive, CLT and task- based approach to facilitate my teaching. I would stress on students’ learning and thinling.  Also I would see each student as a isolated individual that one should responsible for his or her own learning. My potential students would be the high school academic level, so I assume they have the ability of self correction and I wouldn’t mainly focus on their pronunciation. Instead, I would choose to emphasize on their whole language skill separately. L, R, W, and S should all be emphasized. However, I would apply task- based approach and make students communicate and learn from activities. Also through peer correction, students can reduce their anxiety about TL learning and gradually reach the goal of SLA.