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.