Billy the Taiwaness

 Today I had kind of “formal teaching” in class before being a practice teacher in junior high school. From the peer evaluation, I really appreciated the response and sincere suggestion. And, I would be really sad if they dislike my demonstration since I had prepared this teaching two weeks before, fortunately, they loved it. However, my intonation and pronunciation still are my severest problem.  Although I caught a cold last night and had a sore throat, it still can not be the “excuse.” Honestly speaking, it is not good to understand the problem that my flat voice and unclear pronunciation “again,” since my mom has always told me to speak from my belly instead of throat.  Yes, I should improve this problem soon, and maybe speak slowly and talk cheerfully would help me a lot. Yes, Thanks for everyone’s “kind” evaluation, especially Alice’s, yours honest suggestion make me move on, thank you.  Now I want to start this report from explaining why I chose the task. The reason I choose this task is because I want to inspire the students learning poems from different methods instead of just reading it. The first impression of poetry for students is that poetry is hard to understand, so they would not read it after the lesson finished. For me, poetry is inspiring and consolable. So the targets of my microteaching are to help students to appreciate the poem, to see the scene described from the poem and to “sing” it.       While implementing the different methods in my teaching, the time limit becomes a major problem for me to solve. All I want to do is to give them another way to learn the poem without basing on grammar teaching. First, I introduced the poet, Robert Louis Stevenson, as a writer of children literature. Telling the students that Stevenson is the author of Treasure Island gives them a little information of the author and attracts their attention. Later, the title of this poem, “The Swing,” was asked to raise students’ imagination of this poem. Now, using the song to enhance students’ interests and help them to concentrate the lyrics. After listening to the song, students were asked to fill the blank on worksheet. Moreover, the blank is designed as a words rhyme in order to teach the rule of poem. Continually, an game of matching words rhyme was interacted through PPt.. Here came my obstacle. One of the answers was questioned by the students, and I could not give them the correct answer immediately. Through Alice’s help, I talked to the students that I would check the answer and tell them in next class. With the students’ support, the teaching ended through their responses of the poem.          From the peer evaluation, I found that how my participants reacted in this activity. Most of them give me high credits in organization, physical delivery, and teaching material. Especially, the song activity was their favorite, and it motivates them to learn further. My advantage shall contribute to my classmates in graduate school that three of them were willing to review my teaching and gave me critical responses before the microteaching. However, I did not perform very well in “vocal delivery.” Most of the evaluators pointed out that my shortcomings of pronunciation and volume. The shortcomings were not caused by technology but “me,” and it really makes me a little bit sad. “Pronunciation” represents a central part of teaching English, so I should really find a way to solve this individual problem.        Finally, during this microteaching, I showed partial of the knowledge I learned from this course. And there are still many useful methods waiting for me to apply with courage. I know I have to try the teaching techniques out, forming my own style. Most importantly, your helpful suggestion makes me move on, driving me to improve my disadvantages. Thank you, Alice, your course is one of the best courses I had during my study in college and graduate school. Yes, you broaden our horizon of English teaching. And thanks for sharing us with your life experience.    

Today I  have  kind of “formal teaching” in class before being a practice teacher in junior high school. From the peer evaluation, I really appreciate the response and sincere suggestion. And, I would be really sad if they don’t like my ppt since I have prepared this teaching two weeks before..ha, fortunately, they love it. However, my intonation and pronunciation still be my severest problem.  Although I caught a cold last night and  had a sore throat, it still can not be the “excuse.” Hmn, It’s not good to understand the problem that my flat voice and unclear pronunciation ”again,” since my mom has always told me to speak from my belly instead of throat.  Yes, I should improve this problem soon, and maybe speak slowly and talk cheerfully would help me a lot. Yes, Thanks for everyone evaluation, especially Alice’s, yours honest suggestion make me move on, thank you.     

When Alice introduced this website last week, She had already attracted my attention to use it. And, through practice in class this week, I have my own ”favorites” and “bundle tages” in http://del.icio.us/tkuedutw. It’s really good to try in class instead of after class. For me, I will spend/waste ”enormous amounts of time” in dealing with this tool as a required homework. And, unfortuately, I may forget my “pure interest” of Information Comunication Technology (ICT)…ha.  I believe that ICT is a long journey for teachers to develop their own style. Before they have got used to a tool, there may come out a new tool for them to learn. So, we should learn the way how to use technology instead of being used. And thanks Alice’s inspiration and her abroad experience to broaden our horizon, giving us a world view.   

Visiting date: 4/25/2007
Interviewed teacher: Xiu-Rong Qiu.
Teaching School: Xian Xiao campus of Jheng De junior high school.
Teaching Subject: English
Teaching Experience: 10 years

1.The teacher’s learning and teaching background:
Department of Applied Foreign Languages, Shih Chien University → Center For Teacher Education, Shih Chien University → Taipei County Shu-Lin Senior High School (1 year) → Taipei County AnKang Junior School (3years) → Xian Xiao campus of Jheng De junior high school (3years )

According to Mrs. Qiu, her teaching experience starts from teaching English cram school while studying in university. Later, she applied for educational program and went through many official exams to be a full-time English teacher. When she recalls her teaching experience, her teaching in Shu-Lin senior high helps her a lot. Qiu says: “ I was a practice teacher at that time, so the school asked me to teach all grades. It means that I had to prepare all English text of high school instead of focusing on one grade.” And, the great interaction and feedback from the senior high school students also builds her teaching confidence, inspiring her to teach forward.

2. The teacher’s belief and philosophy.
Now, teaching in Xian Xiao campus of Jheng De junior high school, a disadvantaged campus, Mrs. Qiu says: “ Teaching anywhere means the same thing for me, because it all talks about teaching.” She believes that to teach the young kids, teachers have to feel their heart first. Every kid has his/her own character, and what teachers need to do is to guide them and to give them what they need and what they desire to learn. But, it does not mean to follow the kids where they want to go, and a standard of personal development is still needed. So, her teaching philosophy is to enhance students’ learning interest and promote them a place to learn happily. Mrs. Liu makes a additional remark that “every teacher’s philosophy may be influenced by his/her growing background.” Moreover, “Class Management” also means significant for her. She thinks a good class management helps the teachers and students to build a sincere relationship.

3. The barriers and supports the teacher faces in the teaching context.
Teaching at a disadvantaged campus, she is happy to see many supports from the local community and the volunteer students of Tamkang University. While talking about the barriers Mrs. Qiu faces in her teaching context, she mentions some examples such as, students would challenge the authority of teacher, parents question teachers’ teaching, and the relationship between problem students and others. From the examples she uses, she considers that “teaching the text” does not make a trouble for her, but how to get along with the students well and to be the bridge between students, student and parents, students and her colleagues really needs time to deal with.

4. The teacher’s career cycle and professional development.
Mrs. Liu feels satisfied with her situation right now. Her role not only plays a teacher now, but also a “mother” very soon. Therefore, she will delay her plan of applying graduate school program and pursues her further education through the courses provided by the government.

5. My reflection on the interview
In the end of the interview, Mrs. Qiu hopes that we will not feel depressed after realizing some problems we may face in the future. We can really understand Mrs. Qiu’s saying because of the similar educational background we shared with. And, I know there is a long journey for us to be a “teacher”. Besides fully prepared for the teaching subject, we also have to learn how to deal with “people.”

Listen the Interview:  http://s93.tku.edu.tw/~693010067/interview.wav

Two sections are arranged for us to visit Taipei Municipal Lishan Junior High School: firist, to inspect and learn from the teaching materials and students’ research projects of “English Gifted Resource Class.”(EGRC)  Secondly, to observe Class 912 taught by their English teacher, Miss Liu. While seeing  their fruitful results, it makes me wonder how great effort teachers and students have put in, and they must spend lots time in achieving this goal. Their teaching materials include listening, speaking, reading, and “writing.” They  encourage students to write a play, a short fiction, and a poem.  Besides that, the evaluation of student’s esaay consist of four parts, such as grammar, content…etc. So students would get more than one grade from his/her essay, and would know which part they perform well and what they should improve more.  Later, visiting the demo class, not the EGRC, we still learn a lot from the way that the teacher uses powerpoint and handout to review grammar lesson.  First, through the image/ picture to teach the students grammar, she successfully attracts their attention and inspires them to learn. Secondly, the interaction by using powerpoint in the dark classroom still works very well, and it may be contributed by the well-design ppt made by the teacher. Thridly, in the end of the class, she uses 10 minutes to evaluate students’ learning by asking the questions from ppt. In this way, she can give a quick review of the lesson, and immediately understand students’ acquirment.  Cheers~       

Before our demo, Alice said:” you guys seems like don’t prepare for the lesson today..you are not nervious!”  Ha~ Actually,  both of us are dizzy at that moment becasue of the long- time preparation in the previous  night, so you can say “we’re numb and lifeless” before our show…Back to the topic.  Some suggestions Alice made us reallty helpful for our group. First, we should do a summary of teaching speaking after warm up. then it may help the classmate to understand why we set up the activities in this way. Secondly, we lacked the strategy of “repetition,” reinforing the students’ learning.  Thirdly, as the most important point, the ending should be run by reviewing the lesson we taught.  It would also help the students to remember the key points again. Cheers~                                                                     

This link http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/speak.shtml from the BBC website, it lists the major skills of teaching speaking.  At first, it writes that teachers should know “what students need.” The reason is that students are actually taught, but they have no chance to practice, and are afraid to speak when they meet “real people.” For example, students should learn the difference of formal and informal spoken lang. Later, students should be encouraged to speak and should be given enough time to prepare the words or usage they just learn, increasing the range of language used in the performance in the task.  Finally, most strategies suggested in this website are based on “interaction.” Since speaking is comminucation, so teachers need to create an enviroment with some tasks for students to complete through “speaking,” such as role-play. 

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Six teachers from England visited Jung-yi and Ping-deng primary school on 12th April. While seeing the outstanding acitivities performed by the kids, one of the visiting teachers raised the questions, “How about their subject ( Math, Chinese, Science), can they still perform well in their subject since they have spent most of the time focusing on extracurricular activities?” “The courses before 10:00 am are all Subject course, so the kids still have plenty of time developing their hobits,”replied from the priciple.

After visiting Miss Lai’s class, I am really satisfied with it and getting excited to see the next class. The second class is taught by Miss. Chen and her teaching  is about”Mythology” today.  While stepping into the class, she has already set up the equipment, projecting an image of Greek God in the screen. Wow, personaly, I do thihk it’s a challenge for any teachers to teach “Mythology”….it needs heavy preparation and sincere  ”intereste”!!!  Using powerpoint to teach, Miss Chen starts by telling a story of “Echo and Narcissus.” In order to attaract students’ attention, she asks questions from the picture , and later explains the symbol of the image.  From her story telling and collected photos, I know she must prepare a lot.  If you love mythology, you will definitly like her teaching—She has the ability to teach Mythology in college, no kidding.  And, she still remember to teach the students grammar from the passage. I am not sure if I can teach like her or not…It’s kind of shock for me after this class visiting. I know I have to make up a lot before teaching in the future.