A Comeback Story

It was a total disaster that I did the workshop at MY school more than five years ago. Well, I completely nailed it today, with my colleagues participating in a wide variety of tasks targeting reading comprehension. 

Competency-based Teaching Practices and Lesson Planning Strategies

Sharing competency-based teaching practices and lesson planning strategies with pre-service teachers, complete with a video call to create an English environment

Textbook Reading with International Video Conferencing

Getting the gifted duo to practice asking follow-up questions from the textbook reading

With the interesting reading about a foreigner‘s Taiwan experience, the duo practiced coming up with as many follow-up questions. After that, they interviewed Jessica in English with a video call on Skype. They also got to experience how to carry on a conversation by responding to her feedback. 

Teaching Demonstration for Tottori Prefecture Councillors

Teaching Demonstrations for Pre-service Teachers: Reading Comprehension Activities

Five teachers-to-be came to observe my class, and I shared my lesson planning as well as some engaging activities targeting reading comprehension, using English as the medium of instruction.

International Video Conferencing with Korean Students: Free Chatting

The duo and I had a very special Skype session with eight Korean junior high students in Seoul this afternoon. Free chatting helped create a much more authentic context for students from both sides to use the language.

Teaching Demonstrations for Pre-service Teachers: How to Teach English in English

The purpose of this teaching demonstration is for the pre-service teachers to observe how to teach English by using English as the medium of instruction.

Teaching Demonstrations for Pre-service Teachers: Task-based Learning

南一書局 英語文領域新綱特刊 Vol. 2

Today's teaching demonstration served a dual purpose. One was to help promote Task-based Learning with not only the lesson plan but actual execution in a class. The other was to discuss how to deliver a good 15-minute teaching demonstration to stand out in that extremely fierce competition.

One Word Story

An engaging activity for practicing making English sentences, word order and collocations, verb tenses, and so on

How to Carry on a Conversation

By practicing asking follow-up questions, my student learned how to respond to what J just said and then came up with a question to continue the conversation.

Halloween and Ghost Festival

As the Unit 3 talks about Halloween and the Ghost Festival, I invited Jessica to have a casual conversation with my two gifted students in English through Skype. On top of that, she gave us a campus tour of her university, including the gym, the student center, and one of the classrooms. 

Dream to the Power of N: 2018 Taichung

Sharing simple but effective lesson planning workflow with international education

English Camp: Reading and Speaking with Picture Books

Lesson Plan

I've been interested in improving my English pronunciation and intonation by reading stories out loud and using my voice to bring the characters alive. Also, by helping students with their English speech contests and readers theater competitions, I developed some techniques to enhance their performance. Therefore, for this year's English camp, why not incorporate picture books into voice training and reading?

Lesson Planning: Reading and Speaking with Picture Books

English Camp: International Education Exchange of Yunlin and Ibaraki

Lesson Plan
Taiwanese students and their Japanese counterparts had fun getting to know each other and learning about the beauty of Yunlin County

Lesson Planning: Ice Breaking, Self-introduction, and English Dubbing

Teaching Demonstration: Reading Comprehension with TBL

Lesson Plan

Today, I did a teaching demonstration with my homeroom class for a group of professors and students from Beijing Normal University and South China Normal University. With the textbook article, A Letter to Grandma, I intended to help my students develop active reading skills with a series of tasks because they will have to cope with challenging reading comprehension questions next year.

Lesson Plan: Reading Comprehension with TBL

International Video Conferencing: School Campus and Korean Food

For the last activity for the International Cultural Exchange this semester, we had a Skype session with a middle school in Seoul. Taiwanese students’ topic was to introduce the school campus, and their counterparts talked about Korean food. After these presentations, we asked each other some follow-up questions, complete with two songs in our first languages.

Thank You & Goodbye

Topping off Jessica's three visits with big hugs, milkshake, and of course, fun English learning activities

A Canadian AIESEC Volunteer's Visit: Part 2

It's been over two weeks since the Canadian AIESEC volunteer's first visit to my school, getting three classes of students experiencing what it was like to talk to an English native speaker. Jessica had been surrounded by my colleagues' students during recess, and obviously, they plucked up the courage to approach and chat with her with their beginner-level English.

International Education Exchange at Daegu, Korea

On behalf of the Education Bureau of Taichung City, the English Advisory Team laid the foundation for a constructive cooperation for both cities' English education. With four school visits and the city tour, we had fruitful communication and interaction with not only the staff of the schools but some officials of the Daegu Metropolitan Office of Education.

Thanks to Youngshin High School's vice principal and three teachers' great hospitality, we've got fond memories of Daegu throughout our entire stay there. On top of that, I believed that an even greater bond of friendship had been forged with this exchange. All the members of the delegation would wholeheartedly hope that we can return the favor back when they visit us in Taichung.  

VR English Campus Guided Tour

Turning an activity into the curriculum that can benefit more students with a variety of tasks

Virtual Reality is intriguing because it helps provide a more immersive experience as if you were actually being there. By taking panoramic pictures with Google's Street View, complete with writing a script about the campus and recording the English guide in the form of .mp3, we then upload those files to the online platform, 720yun. The website has many powerful features. It can combine a picture with texts, audio, icons, to name just a few.

A Canadian AIESEC Volunteer's Visit

This afternoon, lots of students got to experience what it was like to use English and talk with a native speaker, the Canadian AIESEC volunteer, Jessica. During recess, Jessica was even surrounded by many who were really shy but summoned their courage to practice very basic English or ask for a picture with her. Two of my colleagues liked the idea of inviting her over again for their students. I myself have always enjoyed cross-cultural communication in English so much, not to mention seizing the chance to practice as much as I can by showing her around the Martial Art Compound and the Yizhong Street after school. 

International School Award: School Visits in Taipei

Those who are in charge of the ongoing ISA projects, complete with the previous award winners, got invited by the British Council Taiwan and the Education Bureau of Taichung City to visit two prestigious schools, Sanmin Junior High School and Dongmen Elementary School, which have been renowned for their achievements regarding International Education. I learned a lot from these visits as well as met many educators all over Taichung that shared the same passion together.

How to MC an English Singing Contest

Being a master of ceremonies for such a huge event can be quite nerve-racking. The MC's job is to make sure every part of the contest goes smoothly as planned. Not only that, we want all the teachers and students can have fun together before the final results come out. So, how exactly can an MC pull these off?

English Stress and Intonation Notes

Stress and Intonation - English with Jennifer

Rules that will make you sound more natural and professional when speaking English

What are the differences between stressed and unstressed words? How to break a long sentence into smaller units? How to use different intonation patterns to signal understanding, doubt, incompletion, or strong emotion?

Bringing the World into the Classroom

Sharing project ideas of international education with native English-speaking teachers of New Taipei City

I was absolutely excited as well as nervous to share my greatest passion for English teaching with over thirty native speakers at Jiangcui Junior High School. It put not only my English speaking but presentation skills to the test. Of course, I still made some minor mistakes, but based on their anonymous feedback, I was also proud that I nailed it as a presenter whose first language is not English.

How to Talk About Anything in English: The Science Fair

Afraid of have nothing to say/write about a topic? With this method, we can help students develop a complete script for an oral presentation as well as paragraph writing.

Incorporating AR and VR into International Education

Having Fun Learning English in Taichung: How to describe a tourist spot in English

Learning English with Augmented Reality

Virtual Reality Course Design Made Easy

By request of Prof. Liaw, I shared this greatest passion of mine, International Education, at the Department of English, National Taichung University of Education. I've been using Skype to conduct English and cultural exchange projects with teachers in Japan, Korea, and so on. Now with Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality, language skills, such as writing and speaking, as well as panoramic photography, editing, organizing, uploading, etc., are able to be integrated into several core competencies. 

Public Speaking Notes with Mind Mapping

Have Fun Learning English with Board Games

A total of 80 students who are about to enroll at Kuang Ming

came to my class and had fun learning English with two board games. Five teaching assistants from Class 802 did a great job guiding their future junior schoolmates to actively participate in each game, aiming at some very basic listening and speaking skills. Based on the smile and laughter, I would say most of the students responded quite positively to today's activities.

2018 Taichung Junior High School English Speech Contest

My opinion about Youtubers

Centuries ago, influencing on a grand scale wasn’t easy for the ordinary citizens. Word of mouth was really the only primary way to pass along information. Books had to be hand copied, which took a long time and was expensive. (Imagine how difficult it was for Confucius or Jesus to spread their ideas hundred of years ago). Fast-forward to the present age. The Internet plays an important role in our daily lives. When articles and pictures cannot catch our eyes as they used to, we watch videos. So here’s YouTube. Now, anyone’s voice can be heard, and anyone’s face can be seen within seconds worldwide.

First of all, YouTube gives everyone a voice and show them it to the world. Each of us has the right to speak up for ourselves. For example, there was a girl who thought it is was unfair that she can could not join the 2017 Taipei Summer Universiade,. She posted a video on YouTube, and it became a hot video went viral on YouTube overnight. Moreover, YouTube can expand our area of inference (reach out to a gigantic amount of people). The number of people watching YouTube has increased 40 percent every year since 2014. It’s predicted that by 2019, video traffic will be (account for) 80 percent of all Internet traffic. With a good command of English, you can even try to post what you love in English, a lot more audiences will be able to wathc them. In that case, if you are looking for a job that you can do for something you love, you can definitely consider being a YouTuber.

Lesson Planning with Intercultural Communication and Critical Thinking

Unit 6: Lesson Planning

1. Overview description of your students (how many, age, language level, and purposes for studying English)

As a junior high English teacher here in Taiwan, I teach three classes, including a normal class of 28 students, a gifted class of 2, and the International Cultural Exchange Club of 18 this school year. There is a huge gap between their English levels. With the normal class, my main concern is to make sure I’ve covered everything in the textbooks, while the other two classes allow me much more freedom to create more challenging tasks, such as Skype sessions, making English-speaking videos, and so on. Therefore, the purposes of studying English for these two approaches also differ significantly from each other.

2. What aspect(s) of critical thinking does this lesson work on?

Of all the critical thinking skills mentioned in the previous lessons, I'd like to choose "Description & Interpretation" for the main target objective of my lesson plan. Students nowadays are constantly overwhelmed with loads of information from social media. Being able to distinguish facts and opinions is becoming more and more important. 

Integrating Critical Thinking Skills into the Exploration of Culture in an EFL Setting

Lesson Planning

Week 1: Orientation; Culture

Unit 1: Let's Introduce Ourselves

My name is Li Guo-jhen. You can call me Guo Jhen. I'm from Taiwan and live in the third largest city, Taichung. I've been teaching in a public junior high school as an English teacher for more than 13 years. My students are ranging from 13 to 15 years old. Even though most Taiwanese students begin learning English officially in the first or second year of elementary school, I think their level is in between A2 and B1, based on CEFR standard (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages).

Also, I am a member of the English Advisory Team of Taichung. We organize workshops for all the junior high English teachers, so I have plenty of opportunities to attend and also share at workshops for English teaching. Also, I've applied for E-Teacher programs twice. Last summer, I got accepted into 2017 Intensive Sessions/Camps Exchange Program and had a wonderful chance to learn about how summer camps are run in the States.

International Video Conferencing with Azuchi

 Photo Courtesy of Azuchi Junior High School

Photo Courtesy of Azuchi Junior High School

“We fall, so we can learn how to pick ourselves up.”

At the very end of this semester, we had two Skype sessions again with Azuchi Junior High School, Shiga, Japan. Students from both countries were having fun talking about themselves, school life and hobbies during the video conferences.

An Australian AIESEC Volunteer's Visit

For the last class of the International Cultural Exchange, what better way to wrap it up than inviting another AIESEC volunteer to introduce Down Under?

A Korean Delegation's School Visit

With the English language campus tour, a series of tasks that help both Taiwanese and Korean students speak the language, and an exchange each other's school anthem, those students from Changdeok Girls’ Middle School and mine enjoyed today's meet-up, communication, and interaction.

International Video Conferencing with a Korean High School

From this Tuesday to Friday, we had 4 consecutive Skype sessions with Yooree and her lovely students from Yeouido Middle School of Seoul, Korea. We started off with both teachers introducing some fun facts about Taiwan and Korea to the students, complete with self-introduction and K POP exchange between students from both sides. There were laughter, interaction, singing, and of course, motivation to keep on creating more opportunities for my students to experience the joy and magic of using English.