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. I had never thought I could be praised by Dr. Han as "a great teacher"!!!!!
So excited!! I have to thank all of my group mates. All of us were so busy, but still we tried our best to make enough time to meet and work together. Though I designed the main sequence, our micro-teaching was not my own product. I received many helpful suggestions from my group mates, and the most fascinating part which added on the interesting level was given by Mini. She said that we did not have to be traditional in designing the choice pool for birthday gift receivers, let's try something creative, such as "a rigid supervisor", and "the boy that you have a crash on". This part promoted the lesson's quality in terms of humor, which lowered language learners affective filter. It was universally known that code-switching in language teaching for intermediate students can be harmful, but somehow I could not really control it during our rehearsal. Anyway I composed my lesson plan in English! Xinyu spent almost 4 hours with me the night before, working on the lesson plan and analysis of our tasks, and kept correcting my code-switching. Thank you very much! Since I was sooooo tired for the whole April ("Black April for Due"), I was even not sure about my "energy level" during micro-teaching. My group mates encouraged me and comforted me a lot. I love you, girls. Of course, I must express my gratitude to all of the teachers and faculties in TCSOL program, and the teachers, as well as the students, who helped my in the Eastern Asian Department of Columbia University. It was the assistance from them which makes these amazing experience possible. I got a chance to understand Task-Based Language Teaching, to approach all the great theories on Second Language Acquisition, and to really reflect on my first language, Mandarin, under the instruction of top scholars in this field. I think I found my enthusiasm here again. |
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