Interviewer: Clare
Interviewee: Ms. Lin (林汝瑄 老師)
Interview Date: 2007/04/02
The Visit of Li-shan Junior High School April 27, 2007
After the visit of Li-shan Senior High School last time, we went to its sister school, Li-shan Junior High School this time. We group A are arranged to attend English Gifted Resources Class (EGRC), which is conducted by Ms. Hsu. First, I found it is a tiny class that there are only six students (three girls and three boys) in a classroom. Flash cards and posters are surrounded and posted on the wall, and they are all about learning. Some sentences on those flash cards are famous proverbs; for example, they are “Practice makes perfect.”, “Beauty is only skin deep.”, and so on. When we just entered the classroom, the teacher and students welcomed us politely and were ready to start the lesson.
In the beginning of the class, Ms. Hsu used pictures on the blackboard to ask students questions about the characters of the story like Cindy, Stella, and Anna. Because of few students, Ms. Hsu can interact with each student often and every student has enough opportunities to make performance or express opinions. Second, play the CD and students repeated it after each sentence with good pronunciation and intonation. The teacher wrote down key points on the blackboard such as “besideds=in addition”, “nothing=not anything”, and so forth. All of the students were well-behaved and took notes hardly. Third, Ms. Hsu started to teach vocabulary like garbage, trash, rubbish, paint, roof, nothing, etc. She added other part of speech and compared different usages between British English and American English. Interestingly, Ms. Hsu will give small homework at any moment to students like how to spell 青藏高原 (Qinghai-Xizang Plateau). Fourth, it is a listening activity. After the listening, Ms. Hsu also asked students many questions about home shopping network and costumes. Several students not only answered the questions but also shared their related experiences with everybody. At the same time, here comes the assignment which is to write the ending of the story. Fifth, they returned to the textbook. The teacher guided students to read the article, Cindy is watching TV, and reminded them to underline the grammar focus and circle the key words. Then, she requested them to role play and they did a great job, too. Sixth, it is an exercise of true or false. Students showed how clever they are and finished it correctly. The seventh teaching activity is Listening & Check. Students have to write down the statement about the picture. And, in the end of the class, Ms. Hsu gave a lot of assignments to students. They need to read Unit 5 on page 67 to 69 and finish page 70, write correct sentences in Unit 4, and practice their role play at noon break. Wow! As hearing about those homework, I felt so heavy as if I bear lots of rocks on my shoulders. Hope them can complete the tasks cheerfully and God bless them.
Ms. Hsu has a good sense of time control but also of giving exercises. She displayed fluent English at an appropriate speed and gave clear instructions in every activity. Moreover, I saw she had constant interactions with students by asking questions. I do think these teaching techniques will help me a lot in the future.
Feedback to Group 5 : Reading Presentation April 21, 2007
Warm-up activity is appealing and interesting, so that each group of us wants to anwer the questions and get scores eagerly. They used pictures and vocabulary to lead us into the main topic: reading. I think the article, General MacArthur’s Prayer For His Son, wasn’t too long for us to read, but variation will help students keep on attention. And, I saw Tiffany had many interactions with students because she asked students questions during explaining the passages and praised them when they have good performance. Moreover, in order to give more details to students, Tiffany wrote down synonyms and variation of part of speech to them on blackboard. After understanding the article, it’s time for information hunting. It’s a good idea to broadcast background music during activity, and students can be easy to get into what we are going to do and I believe they will quite enjoy such an atmosphere. By the way, I like the music very much! However, I can see group 5 must prepare the information hunting so hard and for a long time, but the worksheet seemed a little difficult for us to complete it in time due to our short memory and the length of the answer. Speaking of the game, I can not help but talk about our unfortunate fate to be the loser. Because we can’t find out the 12th hint in the end of game, but we discovered it after “being punished.” So, what I can say is it’s not our day!
Feedback to Group 4 : Speaking Presentation April 13, 2007
Before introducing the main topic, Harry and Billy gave us a role play first as a warm-up activity. They showed us the MULTI learning website made by Tamkang University and took good advantage of it. First, they broadcasted the real-stituation animations without subtitle, then with subtitle later. Afterwards, we learned the vocabulary and practiced the pronunciation many times. After that, we can familiarize with the key sentences between the waiter and customers, so they gave us the script of the animation. For me, it is fun to use MULTI, because we can get information visually and by audition. Moreover, we also made role plays to experience the real situation and apply what we have acquired from their presentation. Interestingly, I found many classmates have a lot of creativity and imagination. According to the handout, those people displayed so different styles full of entertaining effects like bad service, rude attitude, weird waiter and tough customers, and so on. It made learning relaxing and comfortable and I love it! By the way, I think Harry is the right person to teach speaking, because his pronunciation and intonation are like a native speaker very much.
◆ MULTI: http://www.multi.tku.edu.tw/
Feedback to Group 3 : Listening Presentation April 13, 2007
In the begining, group 3 demonstrated the paradigm to divide students into groups in an effective and creative way. In the process of delivering worksheets, it was working on grouping. They used stickers pasting on each worksheet as classification, so we can easily find our partners in accordance with the same token. During the activity of dictation, the speed of the movie seemed a little bit fast that we couldn’t catch up the worksheet, so they replayed the movie several times to let us fill in the blanks of the worksheet as much as possible. After the dictation, it was the show time for students to role play. Every group had different interpretations at the same script and we can review what we just learned earlier. Again, the flashcard game is another learning activity repeating the topic we learned today. As Alice said in class, repetition is a kind of reinforcement. I think I will keep what I got from the presentation of group 3 deeply in mind and look forward to such enjoyable learning atmosphere next time!
