常平英语教学培训活动

今天和豫添小学三位英语老师到旭升小学听示範课。Shu Sheng Xiao Xue is a four-star private primary school. The size of the campus should be about the same as that of Yu Tim. There are two blocks of building with a beautiful garden.  Therefore they have much greater built floor area and so can accommodate a greater number of students. The sports ground is much smaller than that of Yu Tim.

The event was hosted by the English Section of the Chang Ping Ministry of Education. The demo lesson was conducted in a lecture room specially designed so that 50 students could be seated at the front, and up to 80 observers could be seated on raised platform. The room was well equipped with projector, computer, screen, visulaiser, CD player, blackboard and audio-visual recording system.

The educator officer in charge, Mr. Xie, a nicely dressed gentleman kicked off the program by welcoming the leaders and the teachers.

Two demo lessons were conducted, on on speaking and the other on vocabulary, for primary five and six respectively. Both lessons were to demonstrate how to use the PEP textbook materials and supplementary teaching steps and tasks were designed and presented on powerpoint.

A close study of the classroom interaction revealed that most of the students' responses were 'yes', 'no', repetition of words, phrases and sentences after the teacher or the audio clip. Visual prompts were restricted to still pictures and limited texts.

The approach was very much the same as what I saw more than 10 years ago. The multi media resources did make the job of focusing students' attention easier though, and the teacher could follow the steps to familiarise students withe the core vocabulary through presentation of vocabulary - situational dialogue - guided practice.

I definitely see the possibility of enhancing both teaching and learning effectiveness with well designed online authentic ESL materials now available in the market.

The concept of self directed learning is still zero in the educators' mind.

The event indeed provided an opportunity for teachers to gather together. However, no connection was established among the participants. Participants were not required to leave their names or contact email. There was no such session as tea time for socialising.

Before we left, I introduced myself as consultant for Yu Tim, and they were very surprised to hear that a person from Hong Kong was helping with Yu Tim try out the most advanced technology for English learning. They were very enthusiastic and would contact us for a visit to our school in the near future.