Final report Wednesday, Jun 13 2007 

Microteaching Tuesday, Jun 12 2007 

Teacher Interview Report Monday, May 7 2007 

School VisitⅡ Saturday, May 5 2007 

Today we went to Lishan Junior High School, which also located at 內湖. The campus was very beautiful and you could see the trees and flowers everywhere. I think studying here is very lucky since they could enjoy the beautiful scenery and breathe the fresh air everyday.We met 4 teachers today .

歐陽秀幸(主任)、吳明貞(組長)呂琇年許素愛

They are very nice and friendly. They provided us lots of useful data files about their teaching works ( the materials, the handouts ,PPT, etc.) From those files, I learnt what and how they prepared before class. I think they must have spent lots of time to do the preparation job.

Except that, they have a special class(英文資優班) for the students who have the high learning willing and achievement in English learning in the school. They have arranged various activities to improve the ability of 4 skills for those students. The students in this class must have learnt lots from the learning process. Surprisingly, they made up their research issue, and worked in groups, then wrote a thesis in English. I think that was a big challenge to college students, but it seems not so difficult to them, they did it and did good jobs.

    Being a teacher, “ What did the students learn from the process” is such a big issue to us. We focus on the professional skills which students can use it in their future work(帶著走的能力), not just the dead knowledge in the books. I think English teachers in Lishan JuniorSchool gave students a really good language environment to learn a foreign language and the lesson plans they did are all meaningful and efficient to lay the foundation of English ability. They are also good models to me and I remembered what吳明貞(組長)reminded  us:

1. Know yourself and Be yourself. 2. Build up your personal teaching style.

I enjoyed today’s visit very much.

School VisitⅠ Sunday, Apr 8 2007 

School Visit Lishan High School      

Class107   Teacher賴珮玲

9:00

§Warming up:Created the environment. —  T asked S to do the hailing, just like fans doin the field at beginning of the baseball game.

§ Vocabulary—T read the new words and explained the meaning of those words.S repeat the words after the T.

§ Exercise:Filled in the blanks. — T draw the picture of a baseball diamond on the blackboard and asks S the answers.Then T wrote them on the blackboard.

9:15

§ Read the assay–1. S worked with partner.2. T chose some students to read the paragraphs. Then explanation the difficult sentences.

§ Listening :Wrote the correct score in the baseball scoreboar.—-1. T read the article and S listened 2. Check the answer:  T chose the volunteer students to write down the scores on the blackboard.

9:40

§ Grammar Focus: adjective clauses –adjective phrases

1.      T wrote some adjective clauses on the blackboard.

2.      T taught S how to change them into adjective phrases.

3.      T did the exercise with S.

4.      T chose some S to read the paragraph.

5.      S changed the underlined parts into adjective phrases.

6.      Reviewed the answers

9:50

§Outside
Reading: PC (political correct)English

1.     T gave S a handoutA list of some non-PC words and the corresponding PC terms.

2.  T read the words and explained the meaning some words.¬T sometimes used the mother tongue

§ Bingo Game

1.      S wrote the PC terms on the Grid.

2.      Listen to the T, and circle the words what you hear.If the S got Bingo, they would had gifts.

Feedback to G.2 Friday, Mar 23 2007 

   I enjoyed the teaching of group 2 very much. They didn’t use the traditional way to teach grammar. The activities they designed connected to their teaching goals, and they gave us clear orders and explanation before we do any exercise. From the beginning of the class, they gave us a handout, and want us to find the grammatical roles of these sentences by ourselves. After that, we played “Simon says “. Though the game was not difficult, yet we learnt taking part of the imperative sentences from the game. Finally, the game of making lively gestures was also funny. However, I think it’s better to use flash cards or put the signs on the blackboard instead of giving a handout. It’s because the students would focus on finding the answers most of time.   Indeed, I like their personality very much because all of them had good body languages, and a sense of humor. I think students would feel closely with the teachers and enjoyed the class very much.

Feedback to G.1 Friday, Mar 16 2007 

   *  Which part do you like?

First of all, I want to clap to group 1 because they did the preparation work in just one week and they really did very good job. I think the teaching materials (the video, the flashcards, power point) they used were very useful and vivid, especially the video. They did not just copy the sections from the film .They thought about the play and combined the real situation with the sentence patterns which are in the text books.

  The flashcards they made were simple but clearly to see. I think they must have spent a lot of time to do the practicing and preparation.

Indeed, all of them had good body languages and they always showed their smiles on the faces, I think that is important since students would cares about the teacher’s feeling and it may affect the atmosphere of whole class. I think that is a good way to get closely with students.

 *Which part do you think we have to modify?

    Actually, I got confused to their teaching goal because their issue was vocabulary, but they also taught us the grammar role and did some grammar practices and games.Indeed, while going to the next section, they did not give enough explanation to the difficult word and illustrative sentences to the question. For example: what function do you like in your cell phone? I don’t think that students all understand the meaning of “function”. But they wanted us to give the answer immediately. I think in the real situation, students would get confused and worry about what going to say in that moment.

Is teaching a craft or a science? Saturday, Mar 10 2007 

   I think it has no definite answer. It’s very flexible depends on different situations or different purposes. Sometime it can be a craft, sometime it may become a science as well. We know that science emphasizes the methods, evidences, and the results. On the other hand, the craft pay attention to personal sense or feel most of time, so it is very subjective. 

   I think the methods are important than the knowledge. The students got the highest grade in the class may not be a good teacher in the future. It’s because teaching is unlike preparing a test. Except the background knowledge, you have to know various ways of teaching to make your students figure out what you are doing in the class. And your teaching steps must relate to the purposes of the curriculum, not just play for fun, in order to reach the ability target in each different stage.  

   However, you can adjust the teaching strategy or speed if necessary, since the students are all unique and different. Someone is perceptual pattern, and someone belongs to be cognitive style.        

   Consequently, the teachers need to be sensitive, and teaching methods have to be flexible, than the students will become the precious crafts in the world.

My teaching philosophy Friday, Mar 9 2007 

   All of us agree that making the English class interesting is an effective way to comfort the student’s fear and increase their motivation of learning foreign languages. However, because of the Taiwan’s educational environment, it seems that “test results” and “star schools” are the only things that parents and schools concerned most. Even though the teachers know how to make the English class interesting and meaningful, they couldn’t do everything they are thinking .Most of time, they have to follow the policy of the government.However, I never forgive my dream of being a teacher and I try to build up my teaching philosophyAs we know that language is an important tool to know the thinking of each other and acquire the knowledge or information from other countries, we can’t ignore the importance of learning languages in this modern society. Consequently, I will tell my students to be active to learn English. Besides the school, they can build their own language environment to improve the abilities of 4 skills from various ways:

  for listen and speakingsongs, movies, TV shows, news…

  for reading and writingchildren books, magazines, literatures…     

   Active attitude and correct methods are the key factors being success, and the learning effect is definitely related to your attitude and the methods. Test result is just temporary, how much you get from the learning process is permanent.

About Me Thursday, Mar 8 2007 

Welcome to my blog. My name is Michelle. I am now studying in Tamkang University Graduate Institute of Japan Studies. Since that I like learning foreign languages very much, except Japanese class, I’ve been also taken some English courses as well. I hope that I can learn more about the method of English teaching from the class and share my opinion and feeling with you in my blog.

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