My visiting to Lishan High School

I reached LishanHigh School at about 8:30. That was really a shock for me at the first glance at this castle-like school with the high buildings on the mountainside. After a while, there were two students leading us, group A, to the classroom in which I thought I would really get some practical teaching experience at that moment.

     The first teacher we visited was Ms. Liu. She impressed me a lot with her vivid teaching style. At the beginning of the class, she reminded the students with some vocabularies taught last class. And then, she started the new lesson with the listening drill of the context. After that, she asked students some questions about the listening context. As a member of toastmaster, Ms. Liu, of course, made her students answer the questions she asked in English Something kept in my mind was that she repeated those questions asked to the students lots of time. I really think that is a good way to attract the students’ attention and highlight the points of her questions to the students. She led the students deep down inside the plot of the context with those questions. She set a good model of elicitation method in her teaching style. In this way, the students might induce the main point of each lesson by themselves, and that made them remember and understand the lesson more clearly.

     The second teacher was Ms. Yuan, a totally different teaching style teacher from Ms. Liu. Ms. Yuan, at the beginning, wrote the phrase “Handling Stress” which the students had learned last class. She told students that they would have a different activity this class. Then, she gave the students the handout and asked them to write down their problems in life. After that she wanted everyone to find at least two classmates to help them solve those problems. Vincent, Hyde, and I also wrote some suggestions for the students to conquer their problems. I do think that was really a good activity for those students. For it not only made the students use English in something else beside the English textbook, but also made them share their inner feeling with each other, included the teacher. That is, definitely, a good way to motivate the students in learning English in daily life.

     After the two classes, we had a small teaching-experience-sharing meeting with those teachers. I did learn lots of things from those admirable teachers. English teaching not just a English skills teaching, but something else. What is that? I am still looking for. But after this visit, I think I have make the idea clearer and clearer.