Hwai Lin - UVA Startalk

UVA Startalk Program (2021)

This is my first time participating in the Startalk Program and it is such a rewarding experience. I am beyond grateful to learn from the amazing team leads and the outstanding teacher fellows. This program helps me redefine "authenticity" as well as catch my own blindspots in my classroom teaching practice.

These are the goals that I set for myself on the pre-program survey:

Gain a thorough understanding about online teaching on both theory and classroom practice
Get new ideas and strategies to refine my teaching skills and increase effectiveness
Collaborate with other teachers to get different perspectives and catch my own blind spots

UVA Startalk Academy helps me to achieve the three goals. From the bottom of my heart, I feel very grateful and lucky to be able to participate in this program and get to know all the wonderful educators here.

The first two weeks, under the guidance of Tseng Laoshi and Gao Laoshi, we learned research-based theories and effective strategies about online language teaching. We’ve also learned about the principles of using different tech tools and PPT designs. Tseng Laoshi and Gao Laoshi’s presentations/ activities are great models for us not only to learn but also to “experience” what effective online teaching is like. We've thrived from the delicate design of this program and the philosophy of learning by doing.

From observing Geng Laoshi and Cai Laoshi’s teaching demos, we've learned how important it is to provide comprehensible input, to scaffold each task to explicit students’ language output, and to create opportunities for SS interaction. I am so impressed and inspired by their demos - not even one single second is wasted in their classrooms.

From observing other groups’ teaching demos, I’ve gained so many new ideas and strategies – from the circling technique to the authentic tasks. I’ve been teaching the unit of shopping for quite a few years, and yet never imagined that I could have done this and that until watching the teaching demos from MS group. I’ve never taught about the job interview unit, but after watching the college group’s demo, I feel that I can do it and I will definitely love to try it out.

Last but not least, our amazing teammates and Cai Laoshi. In the last share-out session of the program, I said this program helps me realize that a healthy mindset is not only about "不進則退" but also "不合作則退". I admire my group mates' different talents and I appreciate their generosity and cheerful personality. To be honest, the workload of this program is definitely intense; however, I feel that I have been excited and engaged all the time throughout the three weeks because I know my wonderful teammates and mentor will always have my back.

After going back to school, I commit to applying the principles that I’ve learned here to create more student-centered activities and SS interactions. I will also continue exploring and learning how to create authentic settings.

Mini-teaching_高中组 D_林華一.mp4

Teaching Demo

Below are some of my takeaways through the program:

Reflection 1

Use CanDos as our anchor

It seems that we can never overemphasize the importance of Can-Dos. We use that to decide the scope and sequence for our program, plan out thematic units for each level, and we should do that for each class period. Without showing students the learning goals in the beginning of the class, students may feel lost and not know where they are going to go. Without revisiting the goals at the end of each class period, again, students may feel that they are simply doing busy work and not knowing why. It also connects to principle #6, the assessments – do I assess what they can do within three communication modes or do I use the traditional way to assess which has nothing to do with can-dos?

Two musts: input flood and pushed output

When I first started my teaching career, the veteran teachers would always remind me “让学生说，不是你拼命说。” I notice that I kind of overcorrect myself on this and it causes another problem, which is I rarely bring flood to my class, but rather a small input pond. Through the teaching demos, I focused on the teachers’ comprehensible input, and noticed how a skillful scaffolding process can lead to students’ output with quantity and quality.

Be aware of the three different activities: mechanical drill, meaningful practice and communicative tasks (I need to pay extra attention to Fake student centered activities)

I appreciated that during our online synchronous discussion, Tseng Laoshi gave us some different scenarios for us to match. I appreciated the follow-up clarification. I will bring this back to share with my department colleagues. If we don’t really understand what all the three terms are, it’s very possible for us to think our classroom is student-centered while it is actually a fake one.

Easier said than done. Though it is true that the keywords above are frequently brought up in many workshops and conferences, we would never know how well we apply and/or reflect on them in our own classroom teaching practice if we don’t regularly film ourselves to do self-observation and reflection. I am so looking forward to the following learning and collaboration in the coming weeks!

Reflection 2

Maximize the use of technology

How can this tool be applied in different modes? What else can you do with this tool? Keep asking, keep learning, keep thinking. This can’t be done without continuously exchanging ideas with other teachers. If not coming to this program, I would never know that we can leverage Quizlet from vocab to sentence level, I would never know that “escape rooms” can be done online via Google Form, either. I wouldn’t even know about 高德地图！

Focus on the tasks

Don’t use a technology tool for the sake of “using” the tool. The point is always about the task itself. Pedagogy comes before technology. A well-planned task can be even more polished because of the technology support. However, a careless-planned task plus fancy technology only causes more unnecessary workload.

Always put ourselves into students’ shoes

In the group meeting session, Gao Laoshi threw out this interesting question “What could educational technology be like in your mind?”, and my answer was 调味料. You want to use the right 调味料 to make your plain dish a gourmet meal. However, I accidentally forgot the most important element here – our guest (the students). We need to know our guests’ preference to design the menu; the same way, we need to understand our students as well before we select the effective tool and start the teaching episode, their age, access to technology tools, prior experience with tech tools to their hobbies…etc. Without keeping our students in mind, we may 事倍功半 even though we think we’ve found the most precious sauce.

Technology is probably still not my strength. However, I am happy that I’ve sort of shifted my mindset from a more resistant one to a more curious one in this regard. Again, I am looking forward to continuing my learning from all the teachers that I’ve met in this program in week 2!