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| Akiko's flyer for recruiting students to participate in this project |
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| Principal 栗原's blog entry on Seijo's homepage |
They finally pulled
this off yesterday and got the principal’s full support. Ten students and Akiko
went to the principal’s office, and what those Japanese students did at the
meeting was really extraordinary and unbelievably amazing. According to Akiko’s
vivid description, one by one they expressed their thoughts and feeling about
this project. One said he came to realize that he really enjoyed talking to
Taiwanese friends at his age without worrying about his imperfect English. Another
said he did not have time to worry about making any mistakes because he tried
to respond as soon as possible. Still another said he felt so much more relaxed
and was able to use the language with Taiwanese students compared to another
program offered by the school in the summer, requiring him to talk to native
speakers from Barkley California.
They really
intended to continue with this project because they got to use English to make
friends their age and talk about interesting topics like school life and
hobbies. For those Japanese students, they felt it was so much fun using the language in
the previous two sessions because they didn’t think it was an English class at
all. They applied whatever they’ve learned from regular English class without
worrying about their imperfect English grammar and insufficient vocab words and
phrases to express themselves. It was fun because they could use English to
talk about their common interests, like music, movies and sports, with
Taiwanese students their age. Well, this is also exactly how I want my students
to feel with this Skype exchange project.
In such a
test-oriented setting, it seemed perfectly normal that teachers spent so much
time getting students to get good grades, which means rote memorization of
grammar of vocabulary used to be the only concern in the classroom. Taiwan is
now experiencing a major education overhaul, moving from a teacher-centered norm to a much
more student-centered approach, and lots of workshops have been held accordingly
to help teachers meet the new challenges. However, those workshops might be
effective in motivating students’ interest of learning with a wide array of
teaching methods, but very few of them were targeting students’ English speaking
skills. I am a teacher who really enjoys speaking English whenever I can, and I
myself have experienced so many times that being open-minded and having a
certain level of spoken English are all it takes to make friends outside of
Taiwan and also to appreciate cultural differences. This is exactly what I’ve tried so
hard to get my students to experience for a very long time.
Starting from this
semester, I’m gradually moving towards this ultimate goal of making English a
tool for communication with this Skype exchange project. Besides setting up the
environment with a stable Internet connection and some laptops, it takes a lot
more to make this happen. Other than a one-hour time difference between two
countries, we also have to develop worksheets and activities as scaffolding to equip
the students with relevant vocabulary and expressions to talk about topics like
school life and music. Akiko,
Bettie and I have planned our lessons together through Skype several times,
coming up with many useful resources before these two sessions. On top of that,
due to a very disproportionate number of students on my side, Akiko had to
recruit students who volunteered to stay after school for this project. For that,
I really owe her a big deal because I can easily imagine how much she’s been
through to go this far. Often times I worried whether this project would be
continued or not. Now I’m sure that we can keep on working hard to realize our
dream because of those Japanese students’ unusual and remarkable act of
determination.
Principal 栗原 not only kindly responded to the students’
request but mentioned what we’ve achieved on the school’s homepage,
a blog entry posted by the principal herself. Of course, let’s not forget that Principal
Hu from KuangMing also participated in our second exchange throughout the whole
session, actively using English to talk to some of the Japanese students as
well. Therefore, for those who have the authority to make important decisions,
we sincerely thank you for your assistance and support, for it would still be a
dream without your help.
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