Experimental Bilingual Teaching Program

Thursday, December 16, 2021

A cross-curricular collaboration in bilingual lesson planning through open fire cooking with sesame oil chicken with rice wine

Cross-curricular Collaboration

At the request of the NCUE EMI Research Center, I got to work with a Scouting Education teacher and develop an engaging bilingual course for my school. Under the framework of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), we created a four-class-period bilingual lesson plan, worksheets, and PowerPoint slides. The idea is for students to be exposed to more authentic English input while doing hands-on tasks in their Scouting class. For that to happen, an effective cross-curricular collaboration would be essential.

Open Fire Cooking

The scouting teacher and I decided that our collaborative course should be theme-based and full of hands-on learning experiences. We went through the textbook to look for lesson planning ideas. It didn't take long before we made it official to go for open-fire cooking that included:

• outdoor skills and wilderness survival

• cookware, ingredients, and steps

• cooking sesame oil chicken with rice wine

• a simple introduction to open fire cooking in English

This NCUE funded experimental program allowed for spending on supplies for teaching. We bought some cookware and ingredients for cooking according to plan.

CLIL Lesson Planning Format

The format consists of the usual competency-based elements. There are core competencies, student performance, learning content, and so on, for Content. As for Language, it contains:

• subject-specific terminology

• grammatical/discourse structure

• teacher's (procedural) and students' (functional) classroom English

I included terminology regarding wilderness survival, cookware, cooking verbs, ingredients, and steps. They all are relevant to the student end product, making an English-speaking video introducing how to cook the meal.

A Pilot Class with Gifted Students

Mrs. Yang's scouting class was popular among many students, including my four 9th-grade gifted students. As I overheard them saying how much they missed her class, I immediately decided to have a pilot class after the midterm exam.

We had so much fun cooking sesame oil chicken with the firewood stove. My students were busy collecting twigs and branches to start a fire. They then pan-fried the chicken with ginger and simmered it with low heat. As Mrs. Yang and I prepared for the pilot class, we thought we couldn't finish the big pot, with the whole chicken, noodles, dumplings, and so on. It turned out we nearly did not have enough to give away to other teachers.

Advisory Conference

Mrs. Yang and I gave a briefing on our less plan at the online advisory conference. Two professors from NCUE commented on our collaboration and offered positive feedback and some suggestions. With a government-funded project like this, I'm looking forward to doing another cross-curricular EMI demonstration class again next semester.

Bilingual Nation 2030

By the year 2030, Taiwan will become a bilingual country, announced by the president and prime minister. The government then has been invested a lot into recruiting native English-speaking teachers, rolling out a variety of government-funded projects, and promoting in-service teacher training. The goals include:

• bolster Taiwan's bilingual education system

• improve the public's English proficiency through demand-driven learning

• enhance the nation's overall competitiveness

Probably nine out of ten English teachers I know are pretty much against this idea. The usual arguments are the lack of sufficient class periods, widening the learning gap in urban and rural areas, making no-so-easy subjects difficult, killing the interest in learning, and so on. Well, as a staunch advocate of the Bilingual Nation 2030, I found it difficult to refute the claims, especially with the deeply ingrained test-driven mindset dominating education for decades. However, what's the purpose of learning this foreign language, English, for such a long time without the intention of using it in real life? I've done cross-curricular EMI demonstration classes, engaging students with easy-to-understand lectures and hands-on tasks with English medium instruction. Simply put, as long as students are having fun accomplishing collaborative tasks and exposed to lots of authentic English, I don't know why naysayers and haters can't be just a bit more supportive?