☆～～ Shirley's Cozy Blog Corner ～～☆

A rough trip to UPenn~

cutieshirley — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 02:01:07 +0000

Last Sunday on June 18th, I headed for
Philadelphia for my master study. I waited for five hours in
Japan because the plane was out of order. Thus, when I got to Philly, I was six hours later than the planned time. Thanks for the help from seniors so that I can get to the school safely. Thank you~

Here is the website where you can see some pictures I took on my way to UPenn.

http://www.wretch.cc/album/cutieshirley

Ken & Yetta Goodman~ whole language conference

cutieshirley — Fri, 26 May 2006 17:40:49 +0000

Here are some pictures taken on the conference.

Two days of whole language conference finally came to an end. Estela and I went there together. Though there is one more conference that will be held inTainan on 5/30 and 5/31, it’s a pity that I couldn’t participate in it because of my school work. >"< Nevertheless, I’m still happy to meet Dr. Kenneth Goodman and Dr. Yetta Goodman in person and listen to their speech. ^^

Whole language has been an issue discussed vigorously in recent years. One year ago, I took Dr. Lin’s whole language course. At that time, I was attracted by its humanistic, meaningful and authentic perspective. I would of course doubt of the feasibility of the philosophy in Taiwan, where people care about immediate outcome or performance. However, after sitting in the classes in NTUE about Children’s literature and Reading Theory, I’m acquainted with some elementary teachers implementing the whole language philosophy in their classes. Whenever I talked to them, I come to believe the power of the philosophy. One of the elementary school teacher said, “The process of this kind of instruction takes time, but when you observe students’ improvement three months later, you will think the efforts spent in advance are worthwhile.” Sometimes I will wonder whether this would be true in the EFL context. After listening to the speech, there are some aspects that are worth pondering.

1. Teachers are kid watchers, or observers. Before teachers design the course syllabi, they should know what students have already known, what they want to know more, and what their personalities are. Only when teachers observe carefully can they provide appropriate materials and strategies to their learners.

2. The materials should be authentic, that is, meaningful to the learners. In high school setting, as what
Alice has done in her teaching, she will adopt various activities to help students relearn the same content. To learners, this kind of instruction is meaningful because they can practice and memorize it in an easy way. In addition,Alice will integrate real life situation into her teaching materials, and thus make the learning more authentic and meaningful to learners.

3. Learning is a kind of socialization. Learners are encouraged to work with their peers so that they can learn from one another. Talking or interacting with others can prompt learners to know more and deeper. In Ms. Lin’s class, she will invite us into book talk before moving on to any whole class activities. It is interesting that learners will talk more when they are in small group or in pairs.

There are still more ideas that are worth delving into. From Yetta and Ken, I start to understand language learning more and in a fresh perspective. I truly enjoy their speech, especially Yett’s vivid storytelling and singing. ~ “tra la la la, la la la la, la la la”~

School Visit Report on 5/20

cutieshirley — Thu, 25 May 2006 07:47:30 +0000

Suddenly, it comes to the last school visit scheduled this semester at Fusing Private School. Different from the previous visiting experience, we went to a private school this time. Talking about private schools makes me think of the strict and severe teaching and learning environment in the light of the depiction from elders, friends, and the public. Nevertheless, a practicing senior greeted us with a beam at the front door. The dean sincerely welcomed us during the brief introduction at the very start. All these make me feel comfortable and sweet. When I stepped into the 7^th grader’s classroom, the girls greeted me in a polite way. They are active and cute. After observing the instruction, there are some points I’d like to share with you.

First of all, the teacher invites students into a process of trial and errors before teaching the Dialogue. She selects four key patterns appeared in the Dialogue and arrange them in the form like, “ N have V O on N .” As students see the form showed on the PPT, they start to guess the possible words fit for filling in the blank and that make the sentence grammatically and semantically correct. This is a good way for peer learning. Once one student gets the answer correct, the other students can imitate it and try to create their own subsequently. Stimulating students to guess can help them to brainstorm and think. As what I’ve been learning about learner-centered philosophy this semester, the quintessence of the belief is to get “learners” to think, to talk and to learn on their own. In CSGHS, the teachers aim at “returning the stage back to learners”, which demonstrates a fantastic model for other schools.

I like the concept of engaging students into solving the problem themselves. When they go through the process of trial and errors, they will be able to intake the structure into their mind. I never think of this novel way of introducing Dialogue to students. Even if I do, I probably would use this form while teaching grammar only. Through the familiarity with some key patterns in advance, students would understand the Dialogue with less difficulty when they come to face it.

Next, I appreciate students’ generosity in praising whoever guesses the right answer or performs an impressive action in class. I remembered that the whole class would applaud loudly whenever one student solves a challenging problem. This is a nice behavior because students are willing to encourage one another. Especially in the context of private school where the score ranking is competitive, students still hold the virtue of approving others’ performance. Sometimes I will worry that the pressure of getting good grades might rid children of the basic respect and praise for others. Nevertheless, in today’s observation, a warm air flows over my heart after seeing the supportive atmosphere in the classroom learning.

At last, how the teacher switches properly between an instructor and a facilitator is an essential concern in the context of learner-centered situation. The first activity proceeded in this class is showing students the slides of landmarks in the world. When this activity is almost done, the teacher wraps up by asking, “Where have you been?” Here, students are empowered the chance to share their experience. To save time or to move on in an easy way, the teacher draws lots to decide who to answer the question. A girl sitting in the first row is soon recognized as a low achiever due to her keeping silence after being asked this question. The teacher draws the next student to answer so that the girl can learn from her peers. However, after reviewing three students, the teacher gets back to the girl again. She keeps silence as well. What I want to say is the teacher doesn’t give the girl any help until she murmurs some word in her mouth. I’m curious why the teacher leaves her alone for quite a long time. Shouldn’t she facilitate the girl a little bit? Even being an observer sitting in back of the classroom, I’m getting nervous as well. (The girl is standing up and the whole class stares at her.)

It’s really hard for a teacher to balance between the two roles-instructor and facilitator. If I were the teacher, I must have known the girl was a low achiever in the first semester. Noticing the girl’s learning problem say she is bad at understanding oral questions, I might repeat the question in a slower way or provide possible substitutions, like “Japan,New York…” (to the question “where have you been?”). In addition, when the girl finally says, “Tainan”, one girl in the back says, “That sucks!” (because all the other girls’ answers are foreign countries or cities) It is a little bit sad that the teacher doesn’t respond to this. (Maybe she doesn’t hear the student’s reply.) If the teacher does, she needs to seize the chance to educate these students not to deny others’ answer or reply. Moreover, the students’ attitude toward value is indispensably significant in school education, particular the special background of the students in Fusing School.

I truly enjoy the trip to Fusing private school. From the staff of this school, I can feel their perseverance in shaping students’ English competence. After visiting three different types of schools, I come to realize that observing is a channel for a teacher to truly become a good teacher, knowing who their learners are and what they need. This applies not only to teaching, but to your life experience as well. When you get along with friends, you can be a “good friend” to others if you possess a keen observation.

Wanna say HI to friends from Iwate, Japan

cutieshirley — Tue, 16 May 2006 15:58:21 +0000

Thanks for Teacher Alice and James Hall’s effort to combine two groups of students together through the blogs. I’ve seen the comments left by Mihotch, Headbanger, Fantasista and Elle on My experience of learning vocabulary and grammar in schools. I think the momentum for me to stick with English learning comes from intrinsic motivation. After reading their blogs, I found that most of them regarded conversation learning as an enjoyable and valuable language learning experience. As Headbanger mentioned in the blog, he thought conversation made English learning become a tool for communication, not a language only. I agree with this point. Since conversation is a direct output of speakers’ thought and is meaningful, it is thus intriguing to learners.

Reflection: Group Seven- Media & Computer

cutieshirley — Fri, 12 May 2006 02:44:40 +0000

Lin, Miranda, and Lisa introduce the Yahoo Group, Hot Potatoes, and IWill in a very clear way. Well done, girls! Media & Computer are not my thing. I always struggle to get them done. Even though I spend quite a lot of time groping for the software, I do learn a lot along with this process.

Among all the materials they introduce today, I’m interested in Hot Potatoes more. I always do the Word Cross, Word Mix, Word Match, and others by myself. With this software, I can simply use “automatically jumble” to get everything done. However, these kinds of materials may only be suitable for younger learners. For older learners, this may be adopted once a while but it should not take up all the time.After interviewing a teacher, I begin to think over my teaching more. Whenever I come up an activity, I need to know who my target learners are and what do they need.

Reflection: Group Six- Teaching Writing

cutieshirley — Fri, 05 May 2006 03:47:33 +0000

After two weeks away for school visits, I finally get back to the classroom again. Writing is what I always can’t handle at ease among the four language skills. How to organize, what to include, when to state my topic are all I need to take care of during a writing process. But, practice makes perfect. Keeping a blog is a great idea of practicing writing. Along with writing, the input,Reading, is indispensable to your output. Just as Dr. Krashen suggested, FVR (Free Volunteer Reading) will enrich your understanding and knowledge of the language. If you read more, you’ll come up more. However, for young learners in junior high level, teachers may want to control the forming of writing process a little bit as Group Six presents their demonstration.

I get lots of review and lead-in activity at the beginning of the presentation. The teacher recalls student’s memory of how to write an invitation card before moving on to the objective of teaching students how to write an invitation “letter.” In subsequent activity, a step by step instruction is a focus here. For beginners, outlining a clear picture for them to refer to is a must. When they have a firm foundation of one concept, students would be able to expand further without breaking a convention later on. (The convention here is about the certain formula you have to follow when writing a letter. For the content, students surely can create or elaborate on by themselves.)

In terms of the reward, I agree with what
Alice shares in class. Being engaged in activities is a reward itself. If teachers always offer substantial rewards as a stimulus, they won’t be able to nurture students to be independent learners being responsible for their own learning. Even though rewards can be added to your teaching once a while, a clear rule should be stated. It’s not very appropriate to reward a student by saying, “I like you more” or “You’re special to me” merely. For the rest of students, they will feel uncomfortable about this and have no momentum to participate actively.

In brief, thanks for Group 6 in creating an easeful and interactive ambience for us. I enjoy these creative activities came up by your group, such as the way of translating the dialogue. You’re doing well on this. I’m looking forward to the websites recommended by your group. Thanks again!

1. Guide to Grammar and Writing

2. Purdue University’s On-Line Writing Lab- the owl family of sites

3. The writing center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

4. The Chinese Online Writing Lab

5. Easy Writing Center

6. Intercultural E-mail Classroom Connections

to get a brief picture of whole language~

cutieshirley — Tue, 02 May 2006 02:04:50 +0000

You can refer to ~

1. Brief introduction in Chinese

2. Book: On reading (written by ken Goodman)

discussion about reading

3. Book: What's whole in whole language? (written by Ken Goodman)

School Visit Report on 4/25

cutieshirley — Sun, 30 Apr 2006 15:55:01 +0000

On Tuesday, I headed for Zhongshan Girl’s High School for my second school visit. Different from last visit in Fanghe,Alice arranged a high school level for observation this time. Since I didn’t have the experience of teaching high school students or even a chance to visit a highly prestigious high school like ZSGSH before, I was looking forward to today’s visit in Zhongshan.

Classroom Observation

In the beginning, in order to encourage students to respond spontaneously in class, the teacher made a deal with them. (If they behave well and volunteer to answer questions, the teacher will delay the vocabulary quiz to next class.) Being aware that we (student teachers) were going to observe her class, the teacher decided to offer them a bonus (a positive reinforcement) in expectation of creating a more interactive ambience. This was very different from Teacher Emily ( Fanghe Junior High School), who didn’t give concession to students by sparing a quiz. The variation depends on who the target learners were. In my point of view, students in junior high school were young so that Emily tried to be as good as her words. If she skipped the quiz, students might form an attitude that they would have no quiz once a while. But for students in high school, especially in Zhongshan, they were old enough to be responsible for one’s learning. Even though the teacher delayed the quiz, she considered that students had all prepared in advance. As long as teachers sensed positive reinforcement would stimulate students in some way, they certainly could add it to their teaching and thus foster students’ performance. Anyway, it could be a proper strategy to adopt occasionally in the light of various situations.

The first activity was cooking style matching. Students worked in pairs so as to find out the correct English definition of each verb, e.g. grill/roast. I saw the teacher in the effort of expanding students’ knowledge of food, the topic of lesson eight, by giving them extra materials to read. Even though their English proficiency was much better than normal high school students, they might still have problems understanding new stuff written in English at first. Therefore, the teacher asked them to complete the activity cooperatively instead of individually. I like the idea of working with their partners because students can share their understanding and opinions with each other and thus have the courage to guess the answer. I noticed that this cooperative activity worked well because students were guessing, negotiating and searching for the clues, which would impress them a lot in the end. Despite working in pairs, I would like to encourage them to answer in English. They could explain the reasons why to choose this definition by supporting clues they found in English after telling everyone the Chinese meaning. Since most students were merely restating the key words or sentences from the handout to defend their choice, they should try to say it in English so as to practice oral speaking.

What followed was an introduction of several recipes by showing slides. After the teacher assigned students homework about searching for an English recipe on the internet, she showed them some examples and explained how they could initiate homework when going back home. This would be a good and clear demonstration because students saw a concrete product in advance. The teacher then was sure that students would do the assignment in a right way. Apart from this, the teacher interacted with students while showing students those recipes. She asked what the possible ingredients are, what the dish would be like, and how they would like the dish. I recognized that this kind of talk could arouse students’ interest in longing for exploring the recipe more. When they guessed wrong, they would burst into laughter. An interactive atmosphere like this was what I would like to develop in my teaching. But, I would leave the part of reading aloud to students, which meant I would randomly choose students to read the recipe in class. If the teacher read the recipe from beginning to end, the students listened passively and might not pay attention to the content until they were being asked questions.

The last procedure was filling in the blanks with proper food or vegetable names so as to complete the idioms. This was a very good supplementary material consistent with the topic they were learning. We all knew that idioms and slang were hard to learn; nevertheless some of them were commonly used by native speakers in everyday life. Instead of giving them twenty-four idioms to fill in at one time, I would choose three to four interesting, funny and meaningful idioms for students to further delve into. For the rest of the idioms, students could finish them after class. Aside from this, I would offer short paragraphs describing the origin of the chosen idioms. Maybe I would design some activities, such as role play, matching, so as to engage students in the context and thus engrave those idioms on their memory. If I just threw them into twenty-four idioms all together without explaining or doing some activities, it would be hard to expect students to memorize or use them in real life afterwards.

My Reflection

I recognized that the teacher put a great emphasis on cooperative activities. Finding this method could prompt students to perform well, the teacher tried to provide chances for them to work together. As what I’d learned form Alice this semester, her teaching philosophy was “Return the stage back to students.” In order to achieve this goal, the first step was to engage students into the learning process. Through this process, students could develop skills like how to negotiate, how to express one’s ideas, and how to convince others. These features were beneficial for a student to possess for life.

Sitting in on an English class in ZSGHS, you would be amazed that each classroom was well equipped with rich digital resources. The teacher could choose to use Powerpoint to teach or play a movie alternatively. This phenomenon was so different from the time when I was a high school student. At that time, when I listened to Studio Classroom at school, I had to listen to a very poor radio and most of the time I couldn’t hear the content clearly. By making the best of these abundant resources, ZSGHS was able to present students’ various learning multimedia resources in the way teachers want.

After talking with teachers at the meeting later that day, I realized the importance of creating a cooperative working team. Within this team, teachers (team members) designed task-based or theme-based projects together, shared extended resources or materials with one another (like the idioms used in the class I observed), and spread their enthusiasm for teaching around. All these efforts were proved by winning an “Excellence Award.” I was touched to see the diligence of both teachers and students. Owing to a very cooperative and interactive working staff, students were nurtured, molded, and grown up. I regarded the two groups (teachers V.S. students) as mutually influential and correlated. I did believe that dedicated teachers will bring about sedulous students; even putting it the other way around would also be true.

One more thing I’d like to share was the change from controlled learning to independent learning or autonomous learning. I observed that teachers in high school centered on fostering students to be capable of learning by themselves. The ambiance in high school is much more relaxed and liberal than junior high school setting. The teacher in high school would not urge that students go home and memorize something. Since students in high school were mature enough to be responsible for their own learning, they had the right to choose what to learn and how to learn. Being a teacher, he/she acted as a facilitator or a friend who guides students to move forward, who demonstrates how to make a choice, who offers suggestions, and who furnishes students with ample resources to refer to.

All in all, no matter students are advanced learners or beginners, the core lies on how to provide students “i+ 1” input so that they will grow bit by bit. Like the case in Zhongshan, since learners have the potential to be educated further, they will be nourished by project as “More than English.” However, knowing exactly what students need requires a keen observation which takes time to cultivate. After visiting this school, I feel there are more things I need to further in the future.

“Whole Language Conference” on May 24th~25th

cutieshirley — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 14:10:00 +0000

Dear all:

The father of whole language, Dr. Kenneth Goodman, is going to visit Taiwan in May. He will give a speech covering topics about theory of whole language and his research. If you're interested in whole language, don't miss this chance to have a talk with this famous professor. ^^

Date: May 24th (Wednesday) 13:00 ~ 17:30

May 25th (Thursday) 8:00 ~ 12:30

Location: National Taipei University of Education

Please click HERE for detailed information.

To know the topic more, you can refer to ~

1. Brief introduction in Chinese

2. Book: On reading (written by Kenneth Goodman)

3. Book: What's whole in whole language? (written by Kenneth Goodman)

School Visit Report on 4/11

cutieshirley — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 15:34:14 +0000

The school we visit really endeavors on their job of educating students. In the class I observed, Teacher Emily is a young energetic and enthusiastic teacher. From her interaction with students, she must have put lots of effort on building up the close relationship. There are lots of perspectives I observed during her instruction. I invite you to take a look here.

This is my first time to visit a junior high school as a student teacher. Am I going to do my practice here? Nope. I VISIT Fanghe Junior High School and OBSERVE an English class. Before I go there, I have pictured a possible scene I might see in a junior high school: a teacher teaches in the lack of enthusiasm; the classroom is crowded and dark; students are boisterous and rebellious. However, a visit to Fanhe completely breaks down my conventions to a junior high school. It’s far beyond what I’ve envisioned in the light of my past learning experience.

Orientation:

The principal gave us a briefing of her school before we plunged into the classroom and observed a teacher’s demonstration. I was amazed at how enthusiastic and cooperative the staff was. The principal and teachers ranked students’ well-being as their priority. Before initiating any projects, the staff would gather around and ponder over topics like, “What do our children need?” “Where is our children’s superiority?” “How can we take advantage of the geographical characteristics of our school?” What I observed here were issues focused on learner-centered learning. Furthermore, teachers would not push students onto the stage without getting them to be prepared first. Take English Drama Competition held in second semester of 8^th grade for instance. Teachers would spare time practicing writing, speaking (pronunciation) and performing from the first semester. Since students were guided and nurtured step by step, they would possess the confidence and courage in presenting the drama in the end. Apart from this, what students learn from this experience was more than language itself. Through a group activity like this, children had learned the ways to cooperate with peers, to negotiate with one another, to be responsible for one’s business and to capture audiences’ attention. These capabilities teachers brought up to children were precious heritage to them for life.

This reminds me of the working experience I had at a private language school. One time, I noticed that when students were undertaking a group activity, they were being harsh on one another and were reluctant to cooperate with their team members. I then discussed this problem with my teacher (my boss) because I was concerned that this kind of behavior might be an obstacle for them to build up an amiable relationship with others in the future. She gave me this reply without hesitation. She said, “No matter how great a student performs in his/her test, what I concern most are his/her proper attitude, right behavior and nice personality. If we don’t pay attention to these inappropriate behaviors and indulge them in conducting their own way, we will truly lose them.” What my teacher told me indeed impressed me a lot. I was so touched by these words because what a teacher should instruct was more than knowledge. We should care more on shaping students into a pleasing personality which would be with them all their life.

Classroom Observation:

I was pleased to see how energetic and vivacious the English teacher is. As far as I was concerned, Emily wasn’t an instructor merely. The atmosphere between Emily and her students was so friendly that students view her role as a friend. I was surprised that Emily knew students’ “language” quite well. Owing to this, she could easily catch up with what students were talking about and give them a proper feedback. But, this didn’t mean that she would allow students to be impolite or to behave without rules. When students didn’t behave properly, she would be serious immediately. Furthermore, she balanced well between the role of an observer and the role of a facilitator. Through the whole class, Emily paid attention to students’ performance when she was reviewing or introducing new materials. When she detected that students couldn’t respond to her question smoothly, she would offer proper cues to guide them or recall their memory. She was sensitive to what students need now and what obstacles might hinder their output.

When I observed the various roles Emily played in her class, I was sure that everything was possible. Though I may wonder about how theories be put into practice while I was reading, I saw a very good model from Emily. Through Emily’s demonstration, she showed the role of a teacher was not only an instructor but a live human being who cared, understood, gave an aid, and shared. She mastered these roles in a mixed and natural way and the variation catered to the multiple situations encountered in a classroom. In my point of view, to be a well-rounded teacher wasn’t an easy job. How could I switch my roles appropriately and offer fitting responses when I face diverse situations? I think I would discuss my difficulty with my colleagues or advanced teachers. Being a novice teacher like me, consulting with teachers who have dealt with similar situations before would be a good way to start from.

Talking about the strategies Emily used in her class, I did find some from her instruction. She drew examples from students so as to review the grammar they had taught previously. This would make the practice more interesting to students. When it came to vocabulary part, she would not give the correct pronunciation to students immediately when students couldn’t say the word by themselves. She would segment the syllables and then lead them to combine the syllables from one to two and to the whole word. One more thing that deserved noticing was the immediate feedback of the quiz. Emily reviewed the quiz soon after students had done the test. By going through the quiz, students could check their understanding directly and know how well they’d performed so far. Apart from this, students knew where to improve from the suggestions given by Emily. As for the teacher, she could switch today’s schedule a little bit by adding more practices or further explanation on the confusion that students showed on the test.

Observing Emily’s instruction, I found the teaching depended more on teacher’s role. Learner-centered learning was not much in the class. Maybe the reason was that students in this class were low-achievers who needed lots of drills and rote learning so as to build up their understanding of English structure. I like her idea of asking students to self-read before she plunged into dialogue explanation. Even though students couldn’t know exactly what each sentence or word means, they could grasp a rough idea in their mind. But, I would like to discuss with students after they’d self-read. Emily gave the translated Chinese to students soon after students finished self-reading. I was thinking how she could ensure that students were improving their ability to read. She did ask students to underline the words they didn’t know and thus check their understanding of the dialogue. However, a girl sitting in front of me underlined only two words. (She only got 44 points in the quiz.) I was not saying the scores would indicate the girl wasn’t a good reader. I was only curious how this phenomenon appeared. Maybe the girl understood the words but had no idea about the dialogue. If I were Emily, I’d like to spend some time having a short discussion with them. By this way, I could check how well they’ve been progressing so far.

My Reflection:

In conclusion, I saw various dimensions of language teaching in Emily’s class. What I’m sure was Emily’s enthusiastic attitude in instructing. This would be a great gift for students in Fanghe. From the principal or teachers I had observed so far, I noted that whatever projects the school planed or held were in the hope of bringing students the best welfare. How to foster students to be a whole person is the belief held by all staff. The experience to visit Fanghe junior high school was only a start to know the real situation in schools. I can’t wait to experience the visits to other schools later.

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