New York is a city, which teaches me that it is never too late to start learning. It gives me a student of 86 year old, who is still learning English, because he wants to live with his son, though the whole family is from Dominican Republic.
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呼喊是爆发的沉默/沉默是无声的召唤/不论激越/还是宁静/我祈求/只要不是平淡/如果远方呼唤我/我就走向远方/如果大山召唤我/我就走向大山/双脚磨破/干脆再让夕阳涂抹小路/双手划烂/索性就让荆棘变成杜鹃/ 没有比脚更长的路/没有比人更高的山
I finished my last level 2 ESL lesson of Community Impact, Columbia University.
It was such a wonderful experience to work with my co-teacher, and we supported each other strongly and warmly. It was sort of privilege to have a native speaker in the classroom, for I am also a English Language Learner, and some of my English is in British way, which could sound strange here. I also want to announce that I had the best ELLs in the world. One of my Chinese co-workers told me when she went to her ESL classroom for the first time, one of the students shouted out that "wonderful, we are going to learn Chinglish from now on!" I was blessed that my students paid me a lot of attention and respected me a lot. (They even called me "Professor Lu"!) Moreover, they were strongly motivated. Sometimes I had to conduct some drill lessons for them to enhance some specific expressions, such as "does he know" which they tended to say "do he knows". It was boring, I have to admit, even I myself prefer task-base teaching better. But they just fellowed my instruction closely, and was willing to repeat again and again. They were of very sweet personality as well. By the end of yesterday's class, one of them told me that she understood how hard I worked for them, and she was grateful. I was nearly cried. First, she used perfect English. She made huge progress here, if you know that she was unable to pronounce a word correctly at the beginning of the class. Secondly, I received my second "thank you" as a teacher in my life! (First one came from my Peruvian kids. Hopefully I will find a day to write about that story.) Actually, I should be the person who have expressed gratitude. This class taught me a lot. I have an architecture engineer here, who came to New York for her dream. When she was talking about her dream, her face lit up. I have an 86-year-old gentleman who came to live with his son's family. Naturally his reaction is slower, so he always sat away from the others to avoid bothering them. However, he had never stopped learning. He was learning new words, learning how to speak English, and he was willing to ask questions. By the end of this semester, he was able to talk about all the topics we covered, with a fair speech pace. I had a couple, who always went to different people to work with but not within themselves. They said they would not have to speak or use language to understand each other, so they would not practice at all. I teach in New York City, because it is teaching me everyday. |
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