初級英語語言藝術課程 (English Language Arts)

使用思維導圖工具 & 應用文體教學：信件和生活化主題論說文寫作

根據加拿大的學習要求計畫指南的標準，Esther老師為本校國中生制定了初級英語語言藝術課程，

目前針對國中一年級的學生，正在進行原創文體(Original Text )的寫作練習，其學習目標為理解各種寫作的形式、元素和技巧。

對於許多沒有接受過正規英語寫作訓練的台灣年輕學生來說，思維導圖教學是一種產生和組織想法的很好的方式，因此在教學過程中，Esther老師大量使用「思維導圖工具」來幫助學生構思，且讓學生進一步添加更多的細節闡述說明。這些寫作的骨幹與內容都是在老師的指導下完成，在課堂上老師也會仔細閱讀學生的作業，根據學生對課程的反應提供寫作建議，並不斷教授此一寫作概念。

Esther 老師也經常會舉幽默的例子來吸引注意力，在鼓勵和讚美學生們所提出的獨創性想法同時，也會糾正他們的語法和形式，最重要的是幫助年輕學生勇於向班上的其他人分享他們的作品，以歡樂的方式自娛娛人。Esther 老師希望她的學生在寫作課能玩得開心，因為她相信寫作的最終目的是讓學生能自信且自在地交流想法與意見，增加對自己和他人的理解，體驗溝通帶來的樂趣和滿足感。

觀察目前現況，台灣該年齡段學生的英語寫作訓練仍受到許多限制，多半為應付英檢的作答方式。然而，身為本校的專任寫作老師，Esther 認為僅僅根據圖片的提示學習寫作，並不符合探究式學習的教學標準。Esther老師熱衷於透過探索和高層次的提問來建立學習內容，並且與現實世界產生連結。在她的課程設計下，所有的教學元素都帶有學習目的，所有的寫作活動也都與日常生活息息相關。

（關於信件和生活化主題論說文寫作的思維導圖教學範例，請參閱圖片）

Mind-Mapping Tool, Writing letters and Topic Essays (current)

As Ms. Esther was formally a junior high Humanities teacher and taught writing in schools in Canada for eight years, today in Lio-Ho she still teaches English Language Arts in accordance to the ELA standards of Canadian program of studies. As per the Canadian program guide of studies’ requirements, for her junior high first graders, Ms. Esther is currently working on “Creating original Text,” with the learning goal of understanding forms, elements and techniques.

In her teaching process, she presently uses the “mind mapping tool” to help students “generate ideas,” as she feels that for the many young Taiwanese students without previous exposure to proper writing training, teaching mind-mapping provides young students with a tool to experiment with ways of generating and organizing ideas. Then the next step would be to Elaborate on the expression of ideas by adding on the next level of details, and all of this are done step-by-step in class under Ms. Esther’s guidance as she carefully reads over student work during class and offers advices as well as re-teach the concept depending on her students’ in-class response to her lesson.

Not only she engages the students with her humorous examples, Ms. Esther is also constantly encouraging and praising the students for the ingenuity of their ideas and at the same time correcting their grammar convention and compositional form, and most importantly help young students to find the courage to share their compositions with the rest of the class—her students love to laugh at one another’s writings as they often write about each other to entertain themselves. Ms. Esther wants her students to have fun in her writing class because she believes the ultimate purpose of compositional writing is to allow students to communicate themselves, to increase their understanding of themselves and others, and experience enjoyment and personal satisfaction.

Previously, student’s English composition/ writing training in Taiwan in this age group had been strictly limited under the restriction to writing to picture-prompts, and this is still the practice in most schools for this student age group in Taiwan today. However, as their writer-in-residence teacher, Ms. Esther feels that learning to write only to picture-prompts simply does not meet the teaching standards of an inquiry-based and hands-on approach of teaching writing. Ms. Esther is passionate about engaging her students by making real-world connections through exploration and high-level questioning; therefore, all of her teaching components have learning purpose attached to them, and all her writing activities with practical everyday connections in their design.

Foremostly, Ms. Esther is passionate to teach writing to Taiwanese students in Lio-Ho, because to her way of thinking, to teach writing is actually to teach Critical and Creative Thinking and Learning through Written Language. To do this well, Ms. Esther’s students are trained to reflect, speculate, create, analyze and synthesize in her writing classes, as she believes that language facilitates student development of metacognitive awareness; that is, it enables them to reflect on and control their own thinking and learning processes—this is utterly important as she strongly disapproves of teaching students in the traditional way in which students who cannot formulate thoughts on their own must rely on memorizing as many essays sample-forms as possible to pass writing tests—she does not like teaching to the test!