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.