Learnings in Edinburgh

This six-week immersion in Scotland was a valuable experience for me, not only as a student teacher but also as a student.

Classes in University
In the morning sessions of the school days, we had methodology and language lessons. When I stepped into the classroom, I could hear some lively music. It immediately drew my attention. It was a signal for the start of an interesting lesson. It reminded me the importance of creating a joyful learning atmosphere for my students.

In the methodology lessons, I learnt a lot of activities on teaching listening, speaking, pronunciation, creative writing and dictation. It was interesting that there were several activities for dictation. I would say these activities were more like games because they were so much fun. Even adults like us would love to play. However, are they applicable in Hong Kong's situation? At first, I doubt it. Most of the schools in Hong Kong use coursebooks, which means teachers have to follow the content of the books. It is better to adapt the material from the books. However, I find that it is possible for us to modify the activities a bit and integrate them into a lesson. For example, there is an activity called "Running Dictation". I can use it as a warm-up exercise rather than a dictation activity. I think students would love it. Hopefully, it arouses their interest in learning English.

There were several talks organized by the university. One of them was "English--- an ever changing language". The guest speaker gave us some examples. People tend to use suffer with instead of suffer from, and use issue instead of problem to ease off the situation. Moreover, some new words and phrases were created such as emoticon and metrosexual. It is interesting, isn't it? As an English teacher, we need to keep up-to-date.

School visit
I enjoyed the school visit very much. We visited two primary schools. One was a state school and the other was a private school. The school layout and the classroom layout were very impressive. It was very colourful. Students' works were posted on the walls. Teachers utilized the space of the classrooms. There was a comfortable book corner. Students could read books there. A sand box was placed so that they could practise writing there. Alphabets cards were posted on the walls. Language games were put in the cupboard tidily so students could reach it easily. Teachers were given lots of resources for the student to learn by themselves.

I was surprised that teaching material was not picked from coursebooks. Teachers designed their own teaching material based on the past experience. They had co-planning meetings to design the teaching materials together. Therefore, the lessons could be more flexible and creative. On the day that I visited the school, some primary six students were having a presentation similar to the TV program called "The Dragon's Den". Students had to make a product and persuade the Dragons to invest money on their products. Students' ideas was very creative. One made an intelligent trolley and one made footwear for practising football. Students were very excited about this. They were very keen on asking questions. It showed that they listened to the others carefully. In this task, they could practise their presentation skill and questioning skill which required listening and speaking.

In this trip, I explored more about western educational system and the way they teach. I enjoyed the lessons and school visits very much. I would like to employ what I have learnt to my students.

Accuracy vs Fluency

Can our mind manage to cope with accuracy and fluency of a second language at the same time? It is possible for learners who are familiar with what they have already learnt. However, it is a difficult task for those who are still in the initial stage of learning a second language. They are unable to speak fluently while they are worrying about using the correct word form. As a result, either accuracy is achieved without fluency or fluency is achieved without accuracy.

In fact, fluency, rather than accuracy, is more preferable in this initial stage of learning. The target of learning English is to communicate with others in English. Speaking is one of the four basic techniques to interact with people. It is important to help learners building confidence on speaking in English so that they are more willing to exchange their ideas in English. However, teachers' focus on correcting the grammatical errors appeared in their dialogue would discourage them to speak. They are unlikely to give a try next time.

In addition, as the above mentioned, attention cannot be given to both fluency and accuracy when they are learning newly presented material. Therefore, errors are acceptable if the task aimed at developing fluency. For example, the sentence

"I like reading books."

is presented by a learner in this way

"I like read books."

Although there is an error in the sentence made by the learner, it can still be understood by others. As the objective of this task is achieved, it is not worthwhile to shaken their confidence by requiring them to speak accurately. Teachers should convey the message that accuracy is important, and encourage learners to integrate it into their fluent speaking.

Ways for helping learners to master grammatical accuracy

How can learners be helped to master grammatical accuracy? In Hong Kong, the common answer should be drilling. To achieve this goal, teachers will assign exercises, from both workbooks and worksheets, to their students. Parents will ask their children to complete tons of extra exercise books provided by different publishers. I think this kind of drilling is necessary for those who are not native English speakers. While we are requiring the learners to do these dull exercises, we can also organize some interesting activities in order to raise their motivation.

Let me share my experience. I, before entering the PGDE programme, taught a primary 3 class which was recognised as the noisiest and the laziest class in the school. The academic performance, of course, was not good. It was difficult for them to sit still and to concentrate during lessons. But things changed after I introduced some activities, such as group work and competitions, in lessons. They paid more attention, and showed more eagerness on learning. It was easier for me to demonstrate the correct form of using the English words. As a result, only one or two classmates were often late for handing in their homework. It meant they could manage to do it and also willing to complete it.

Beside applying interesting activities into lessons, providing an English-speaking environment can also help learners to master the grammatical accuracy. For every English lessons I taught, I started with asking my students some daily used questions. For instance, I would ask "What day is today?" or "What is the weather like today?". Then, they gave me the answers and I corrected them if the answers were wrong. They had to speak English in my classes. So they had to ask "May I go to the toilet?" when they needed it. In this case, they picked up English as chunks. Therefore, grammatical accuracy is guaranteed.

On the other hand, there are lots of interesting and accessible resources provided for the learners. For example, they can listen to English songs, read the lyrics and surfed the websites for English learning. HK edcity is one of the websites that contain lots of interesting links for learning English. In a nut shell, drilling is not the only way to help learners on mastering grammatical accuracy.

Grammar Learning --- important or not?

My classmates shared their opinion on grammar in last Thursday lesson. It was inspiring.

In the past, we did not care much about our feelings on learning grammar. When teachers assigned lots of exercises to us, we just finished them since we wanted to have good marks in examinations. We do not hate it but we also do not love it because we learned grammar in such a boring way. As I grew older, I started to explore more interesting ways on learning grammar such as listening to western pop songs and reading the lyrics. Now, they are my hobbies.

I think grammar learning is important for primary students in Hong Kong. Firstly, grammar is an essential element of languages. It helps people to convey their messages. If we just 'throw out' some vocabularies, people could not get the messages. It is because those vocabularies do not make sense to them at all. Thus, we need grammar. Secondly, the opportunities for using English in daily lives are not much in Hong Kong. The mother tongue of the majority primary students in Hong Kong is Cantonese. Their parents speak in Cantonese. Their friends and neighbors are speak in Cantonese. Therefore, most of the time, they use Cantonese to communicate with others. How can they 'absorb' grammar of a second language in this environment? As a result, learning grammar become important. Now the question is --- how can teachers guide their students to enjoy learning grammar?

Unforgetable teacher

Mrs. Owen was one of the native English speakers who taught me English when I was studying in secondary school. I do not remember the way she taught. But she is the one that I cannot forget.

It was the first year she started teaching in my school. I was a F.2 student. My classmates and I were so curious about her because we did not met any foreigners before. She seemed to be different among other teachers at that time. However, none of us tried to speak to her after class because we were so shy to speak in English. Until one day, my classmate invited me to join her group which aimed at practising our oral skill in English. It seemed interesting so I joined in. At first, I thought there were just three of us to discuss something about entertainment such as pop idols and songs. In fact, Mrs. Owen was there. She specially prepared some activities for us. We met every Friday after lunch, sometimes even after school. It was not her obligation to do this for us. She did it.

When I was studying in metric class, she was my class mistress. The academic performance of my class was not so good. Many teachers just blamed us (I know they were worried about us). But she was the one that encouraging us. She even invited another native English teacher to help us practising the examination skills after school.

Although I do not remember the way she taught me English, I do remember her love and care to us. Thank You Mrs Owen!

Learning English in Primary School

Learning English, in the past , is not funny.
I was not keen on learning English when I was young. I remember that there were two things we needed to do in English lessons: sit still and keep quiet. Everyday, the English teacher came to our class. After greetings, she turned on her miscrophone and started our lessons with these words:
"Take out your English book and turn to page..."
Then a boring lesson began. We did the exercises in the English books, checked the answers of the exercises and memorized lots of vocabularies. All of these became a routine job. The most exciting thing in English lessons should be watching ETV although we did not know much about the content of the episodes. It was better than just looking at the books only.
Time is changing. Teaching methods is changing too. More interesting ways of learning English are introduced in lessons. Learning English is more funny now.

ELT

Hi, everybody~

My name is Ryan.
This is the first time I write a blog.
I am not so familiar with the computer stuff.
But I am sure I will learn a lot through this course.
Not only on teaching English but also computering.