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9

In this semester, I have learned a lot. I got to know a lot of teaching methods and activities that are practical and useful. I also learned what is happening in teaching besides telling students what you know. I really like that the professor invited other professor and students to share different things, like the talk on culture, and Vivianne and Jenny’s experience sharing. Different talkers had different kinds of ways to present what they had to tell us, and it made the talks very interesting and memorable for me. I also went to the talk about “The Bilingual Program by Pai-Yun Primary School,” which gave me a look into administration of schools and how teachers deal with this kinds of programs.

I think I learned the most in the last few weeks. Having to do actual work and preparing for teaching others taught me a lot. It made me realized how much work it is to make a successful class. I also learned that it is important for a teacher to know about what he or she teaches and to have confidence about it. Since I didn’t learn French so well, when I taught, I was very nervous and uncertain about what I said. In the last two weeks, watching classmates’ videos and knowing about how they prepare for their teaching was very helpful as well. I didn’t get to see all the groups teaching, but by watching the videos they prepared, I could see things that I could learn from them. In addition, some classmates were really good at editing and I had a lot of fun watching the videos they made.

Overall, I think this course is really interesting, and I’m glad that I chose to take it.

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8

As for the little test, I was responsible for the test sheets. After hearing about that we would have to give our classmate tests, we decided that we would save the information gap idea for the test.

Designing the test sheet actually went really well for me. I already had some idea in mind since we had thought about this before. All I had to do was to find suitable pictures and organize them. I thought that 5 questions for each person would be enough, so there were 10 questions in total. They would have to ask each other in turns in order to finish the test sheets.

I was really happy about the results except that I made a mistake and put the line that separated two parts in the wrong place for sheet B. Most of the groups tested us by having us read from white boards or paper. I think by doing the information-gap activity, they have to think about the numbers instead of just reading what they see. 

Besides the good part, what we could have done better is to explain how the activity goes before handing out the sheets. We did that while we were handing out the sheets and they seemed a bit confused. I think it would be better if we tell them all at once beforehand.

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7

Aside from learning from our own teaching experience, I also learned from being taught by our classmates. 

The first team was already impressive. They taught us Japanese and the way they talked was very confident. They also tried to do a little activity. Even though the activity didn’t go really well, it still made their teaching more interesting. 

Another team that was impressive for me was the team that taught us Spanish. In my opinion, they seemed even more confident than the team that taught us Japanese. Each of their members was assigned to one or two sentences, and they each was very fluent with their own part. They also repeat a lot, which makes the sentences easier to remember. 

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6

Our teaching didn’t go as we planned.

Because we were scheduled to be the last team to present, we got to see how all other teams do before we presented. As I looked at the content that other teams taught and felt how quick the time was passing, I realized that the content we had prepared would be a little too much. We agreed that we wouldn’t be able to cover all the things we wanted to teach, and gave up on some of the longer sentences.

Another thing that went out of our control was that the team member who was in charge of our PPT wasn’t able to come. She suddenly had to go the hospital and forgot her phone, so we couldn’t contact her and didn’t know if she would show up or not. Fortunately she was alright, and we also did alright without the PPT. Even though we were a bit unorganized and nervous, we were able to teach them number 1-69 and two small dialogues. 

If I could do it again, I would definitely try to make our content easier and less. I would also make the parts that each team member should be responsible of more clear. That way when we teach, we would be more organized. 

I also felt really grateful that most of our classmates tried their best to pay attention to us and give us responses. They made me less scared of talking to audiences and made this experience an overall positive one.

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5

When we were thinking about our teaching plan, we looked at the website Roxy found, which is called The French Experiment. (I put hyperlinks for the websites so if you want to check them out, you can just click on the words that are underlined.) Because on the website, they provided some short stories with audios, and we thought that maybe we can try to read a simple story with them. However, after we looked at the short stories and considered the time we would have, we thought that it would be a bit difficult. Since the sentences in the stories are not the easiest, and it would be pointless to just read through them.

After ditching the idea of reading short stories, we thought about teaching them French numbers and some useful sentences that would go with the theme of numbers. On the website, they also have Numbers in French with audios, so it’s very useful. We thought that it would be great to teach them sentences to ask for price and time. 

Because after 70, it would be more irregular and difficult, we planned to teach them number 1 to 69. We also wanted to make two versions of copies with different information for them to fill out as small groups. For example, student A would have a price and student B would have to ask, while student B would have a clock to look at and student A would have to ask.

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4

We also listened to the experience sharing by Jenny Chen. I think this speech was very useful as well. Jenny’s experiences of teaching in school interested me because I had been dreaming of being like my teachers when I was little. Even though it’s not that easy to be a teacher (or rather, “try to look for a job as a teacher in schools”) now, her experiences of teaching students and trying to create all sorts of teaching activities are still very helpful.

In addition to being a teacher in school, another thing she talked about was holding camps. I think this topic is very close to us, because as college students, we have a lot of opportunities to hold camps for kids and teenagers. It’s really impressive how they reach out to look for chances to hold camps, and how they started a small group for this. It was also very interesting to learn about all the activities they did in each camp. The games they thought up for very young children when they read stories to them seemed creative and fun too.

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3

I found the first experience sharing by Vivianne very interesting and memorable. Even if it’s been a while, I can still remember what she said clearly. The speech was really helpful as well, because online learning is becoming very popular. As for myself, when I want to know about something (anything, from drawing to playing guitar), I often find myself searching for tutorials on YouTube. I think that online learning is going to keep getting more popular for a long time, so knowing about teaching English online is extremely useful. In addition, listening to her sharing her course of learning English teaching was really encouraging since I could relate to her about being a student that listened to whatever our teachers and parents told us and not getting out of my comfort zone.

Besides from the information about online teaching, another thing that I felt I learned a lot about is the way Vivianne talked. I think being an interesting talker/speaker is a very powerful advantage in teaching, because being interesting makes students want to listen to the teacher. In that way, the students can pay attention to the teacher more easily and learn better. Vivianne told her stories in a very intriguing and entertaining manner, which made me very interested in her experiences about teaching in a high school and working for the company. I think her confidence is another part that I really want to learn from. Her confidence made her very convincing, and she also said that being confident was very important for her when she was teaching people who were older than her. Being confident makes students believe in their teachers more, and that might be more important in teaching than being an interesting speaker. I wish I can be as confident as her someday.

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2

This week, I started to use an app called “Memrise.” Because I had used it to learn Japanese before, I was feeling rather confident about it. 

I expected it to teach me alphabets first, but it started with simple greetings. I think this may be better for learning French, since learning the alphabets can take a very long time. When I was learning Japanese on Memrise, it first made me practice with the alphabets. I’m not sure why, but I indeed feel that French alphabets are a bit more confusing than Japanese alphabets. Starting with easy phrases on French made me feel better.

Also, French words have many muted sounds, which means that knowing alphabets is not that useful when we start to learn about words and phrases. Even if we know how to pronounce individual alphabets, simply putting them together is not how the words would be pronounced. It’s different from Japanese because when I was trying to say Japanese words, I can read the hiragana they give me. So I think I will try to learn the words and phrases instead of the alphabets for now.

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1

Our group decided to choose French as the language we are going to learn this semester. It’s a completely unfamiliar language for all four of us.

At first I was very excited about learning French because it seems like a very romantic language, and it’s an important language in Europe as well. Additionally, I also thought that choosing a language I had no idea about would be a good challenge.

However, as we started to discuss about where to start, we were really lost. We thought learning the alphabets first would be a good idea, but after that, we don’t really know what to learn next. We agreed to learn some words or train our listening after we learn about the alphabets, but we were not quite sure.

For the fist two weeks, we all found some useful YouTube videos that introduces French alphabets. This is the video that we thought was the best and the easiest to understand:

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They pronounce each alphabet very clearly, and give examples for each of them. I’m still trying to memorize the alphabets. Sometimes the same alphabets with different pronunciations are a little confusing. I may try to find some apps that are good for alphabet learning.