教學省思

1. What makes a lesson great?

The lesson that impressed me the most is a Chinese course I took years ago. The teacher not only explained the meanings of the lesson but also divided us into groups and asked us to make the lesson into a play. Believe it or not, we were actually on stage at the end of the semester! Students tend to remember this kind of thing for a long time because they are actually taking part in it. Another example is a course called "Children's Literature." The professor asked us to create a story, and then make a picture book by ourselves. I still kept it on my bookshelves, even after so many years. All in all, it's important to let students get involved in the lesson and motivated by it. What's better, let them create something that will last long, i.e. a piece of work, or simply memories. Let them have hands-on experiences because they will, more or less, learn something by doing after all, and that's the purpose of education.

2. The diversity in my classroom

My students are high school students, aged from 16 to 18. They speak the same language and write the same characters. To them, English is a foreign language which is taught at school. What's different about them is their purpose of learning English and ability to handle it. Of course, they have different social and family backgrounds. They may come from the city or the countryside. Although they are monolingual, they are still very different. (In my class, there are one or two students who are physically challenged, but they usually go to special courses rather than stay in my classroom.)