Angel’s teaching experience in China

Target
I visited a primary school in Luoding Shi which is in Guangdong for 1 week in 2010, teaching a class of 30 Grade 6 students English. My team mates and I designed a series of teaching plan which includes games, music and competitions. We started off every English lesson with a new simple English song. I would ask all of them to stand up and form a circle with hands holding together to create a warm and friendly atmosphere. Sometimes we would also add actions to the songs to further strengthen their memory.

Impressive Moments
Many of the students turned out to be pretty good at English. When designing the teaching plan, our team planned to give them a revision on the first lesson and for the following lessons we would teach them simple English vocabularies. However we found out at the revision class that most of them were good enough to speak simple English words. Therefore we quickly made changes in the teaching plan to fit the scenario at that time. The plan turned out to be very successful as all the students enjoyed having English lessons with us. Most importantly, they really learnt some useful English from all these activities.

Benefits of Students
I think the students understood that learning can be fun at the end of our program. Under the rural area education system, students have no choice but to sit in the classroom passively. Due to their living environment, most of them are not able to get access to the internet to listen to English songs and cannot afford buying CDs. Hence it is a whole new experience for them to have a chance to study English in this playful way so I think the program had definitely raised their interest in English. This trip also stimulated them to think of things that can make learning more interesting regardless of their living condition. For example, doing role play with classmates in English is one of the fun ways to enjoy themselves after class without spending money.

Benefits of Myself
I have learnt to appreciate everyone’s talent after seeing all the students are so gifted. Despite of their poor living condition, I can still see many of them strike hard and hope one day they could get out of the rural areas and follow their dreams. I believe that everyone deserves to have equal rights, that is why I keep encouraging them not to give up easily and should always keep up this spirit. I also try to give them positive energy by praising their good English. It motivates me to participate in more volunteer teaching every time I saw their cheerful faces as I feel like I have influenced them to think positive and optimistically.

Methods And Approaches
Before playing games or starting an activity in each lesson, our team would usually gave a briefing to the students to let them know the instructions. Our strategy is wish to create a comfortable atmosphere hence we would ask the students to sit in pairs to make them feel they are not having a formal lesson. However, this might lead to a problem that they kept chit-chatting and ignored the class. We then came up with an idea of setting up a scoring system. Marks will be deducted for those who are not paying attention while students who are participating well in class will be rewarded.
The other approach that I used to make them feel relax is to invite them to write on the whiteboard or blackboard. They usually got very excited about that because only teachers are allowed to write on the board during normal school days.
Drawing is another essential method to get the children enjoy the lesson. I would then suggest colour pencils as a perfect prize for those who win a class competition.