After reading the lesson plans, I realized the importance of  planning ability to an English teacher. How an English teacher makes students involve in their learning. And task-based activities here bring  its merits into full play on speaking, since everybody has his/her own responsibility to their  group. I think peer pressure and feedback becomes supervision to push the students to pursue a great score.  

 However, one of the biggest barrier to teacher teach speaking, is the “English-clammed students”, who shut up like a clam when the teacher ask them to speaking English.  Accordind to my teacher interview, the teacher told me that her students are afraid of making mistakes, and always feel embarrassing when she call on them to answer in English, so she will call on a row of them and arrange a small competition among two rows, or hane some satisfied students to lead whole class to read. To compare with task- based activities, I consider the teacher’s method is a passive approach, but it is still one way to make student speak English.

 These weeks, we had several discussions which made a little difference on sharing. For me, to reform us into another group, really made me feel responsible to my group. I became more nervous and  concentrated on listening and when I shared the opinions from my original group, I would try harder to let others understand what I said, because that were not just about my own thought but also my members’. Besides, I truly appreciated that if I can’t speakink English, I won’t survive in our class. (That’s why I always feel exhausted after class…..)

 In short, what I experienced let me think toward how to make students get used to speak English in class. Instead of asking, it is more positive to adapt students to the English environment. Then, how to teach speaking has become the further process.  

Dears, here are the pictures of our visit in Long Man!

 Campus tour

“After entering Long Man, you’ll find both our classrooms and hallways are very spacious, then why we built such a huge campus? All of us know the environment education, we believe this spacious space can cultivate students a capacious mind….” Teacher Ben said.

 In the beginning, we heard an unlucky piece of news, the observation of Teacher Ben’s class was cancelled…. It was quite a pity that we lost the chance to observe Ben’s teaching, he’s such an energetic and enthusiastic teacher, but he guided us to visit their magnificent campus instead, and that was a wonderful experience for me.  

 I have never thought I would take picture of a campus crazily, what an incredible place! In the hallway; there is even an information board above telling you where to go! The equipment of this school is not only complete, but also artistic and considerate! Seeing is believing! I will update the pictures later then you can show them to amaze your friends! 

 Discussion

 We had a short discussion with the teachers after visiting the campus. Besides Teacher Ben and Alice, we met Teacher Huang at that time. She came into the conference room, carring a  small basket! According to Alice, that’s a particular scene in Long Man. What’s she carring? Contact books! Which is getting larger and larger nowadays. Then the small basket helps a lot, when the teachers have to carry a pile of large contact books or student’s homework.

 Come back to the discussion, by anwsering Marliyn and Leo’s questions the teachers did give us many advices and also encourage us much, and their efforts of being a teacher really left an great impression on me, especially Ben, who has set his goal and started to pursue it hard since he was a university student. But I just can’t find the same enthusiam in myself…. Howerver, from the teachers’ sharing, I realized that no matter how the future will be or when it is coming, I won’t get any chances unless I get ready.

 Class observation

 That’s interesting! It seems that I have magic!  Hahaha….  That’ the very example of the different learning style between everyone.

 After the discussion yeaterday, after I saw FLY, I find my self basically a visual learner, I  like learning by seeing, especially movies, and I do agree what Kurt said about his own learning strategy and style. 

 Besides, I consider myself also an analytical learner, according to its definition, since I am not that hard-working but I am turly vulnerable to failure.

 However, it’s impossible for one just learn in one way, I think the most important thing is how we can make oursleves learn comfortably, then we can gain more than expectation! 

 Even you like watching TV and doing the research at the same time, it’s doesn’t matter, just depend on what have been learned!  

 I just wanna say “Aamazing!” I learn a lot from Marilyn and Oscar. Both of them are so creative! Besides their excellent teaching, Marily really acted like an experienced teacher, no matter how we pretend to annoyed her while she was writing on the blackboard, she was still calm! And since Oscar didn’t act that expertly, he was like a new one who with great enthusiasm, engaged his students!

 Then what was I planned fot the 15 minutes? Here’s my draft…..

 I wanted to draw something related these new words, and make the students recall their experiences of school life, so I intended to explain the meanings through Q&A, such as “Do you remember your first year in junior high school?” (refer to freshman.) ”Is there anyone talked to you when you just entered the classroom at the first time?” (refer to chat.)

 It’s my idea, but I don’t know how to arrange them in a particular way….. Anyway, I must consider more aspects, and learn!

Unit One- Images of Animals

What is a lesson plan?

 I like the description of lesson plan in the handout. “If you imagine a lesson is like a journey, then the lesson plan is the map. It shows you whwere you start, where you finish and the route to take to get there.” That’s much funnier than giving us the account, I can’t find a better answer or my own word after reading that paragraph!

What should go into an English language lesson?

 According the handout, we can find there are three elements should be ketp in tha planner’s mind. Each of them are Engage, Study and Activate. I think taht is also the order between three of them. We have to get the students interest in the class fisrt, then foucus on the aspect of the language, finally to make a chance for them to produce thier use of Emglish, and I extremely agree the following words “In an activate stage the students are given tasks which require them to use not only the language they are studying that day, but also other language that they have learnt.” That reminds me of my conversation class of Japanese, we always had an assignment of role play after one theme had been discussed that day. Everytime when we prepared the assignment we did use not only the language we studied that day, but also other language that we had learnt. So I believe that the role paly is one of the most active way to examine student’s learning.

Why is planning important?

 There is another question extends from this, “Do you need to plan if you have a course book?” The answer is definitely “Yes!” The reason is based on the handout, since a lesson plan is like a map, let’s consider a course book as a guide book which contains much useful information,  it just depends on the adaptability and requiremaent for each different tourist group. Then back to the original queation, with the same opinion, planning brings more flexibility and assurance, that’s why it is needed. 

What are principles of planning?

 Finally, how sohould the planning be? As above, first of all, we must know where we are going and how, this refers to aim, then we have to make our student be interested in what they are going to learn, so we need to add much variety to our plan, try to have their attentions. What’s more? “Expect the unexpected” We plan for the lesson but that doesn’t mean we must, or we can always follow through on it, because it is impossible for us to foresee what will happen during the class. All we can do is  keeping the flexibility and always prepare the Plan B in our mind.

 on preparation 

  Durimg my personal reading, I have to admit that I rarely study in whole English, so I did spend  quite a long time to do that, and I realized that I have to work harder at the same time! After reading, both of Sam and me percived that the content of chapter one was a kind of exposition but we didn’t want to  proceed our presentation as a lecture. So we decided to add some stimuli and activities to it.

 Therefore we recollected our learning experience, hoped could find an interesting way to explain those six procedures. And then we remembered the first week how we learned the 10 language teaching approches, that way gave us the idea to provide the clues instead of accounts and arranged the discussion later. Then when we considered that we might have a conclusion, we were not confient of drawing a great one, so we designed the application what probably could make all of us have further thinking.

 Finally, the most important part were done, afterward we must finish our plan. Thus, we divided the class into maybe six groups, made the lipstickers, bought some candies, and used the PPT to connet all of our designs and ideas.   

on presentation 

 This was definitely a whole new experience to me. Fortunately, all of my classmates and the teacher are so kind that I didn’t feel much pressures. However I was a little bit nervous, then I acted very emotionally and exaggeratedly. Although I could not unsterstand every single word that everyone said throughout the duration of the discussion, I still could got the meaning from the interaction between us. After reflection, I found some problems in our presentation.

   First of all, we prepared too many to have enough time for discussion. It seemed that we should explain each procedure and question clearer, and focus on understanding. Second, we didn’t balance the division of our individual presentation, obviously I spoke too much, and I ought to attend more to the teamwork. Third, my English was terrible…. especially my Japanese style of pronunciation and accent. I really appreciated that the teacher and my classmates pointed it out to me. I know I must improve myslef or I won’t be able to keep up with everybody.

 However, it was an interesting experience, and I got more delights in learning English. I will treasure the feedback from everyone, keep my individuality and then strengthen the competitive ability.