Taking One-on-one Online English Course for 10 Years

How it made all the difference

I can't believe that it has already been TEN YEARS since I started to practice speaking English with one-on-one online class, which helped me a lot more than anything become a better English speaker, and that has made all the difference.

A personal story

Growing up in a rural area with parents who knew nothing about English, I still don’t why I’ve become so enamored with the idea that being able to speak the language fluently is so cool. I kept telling myself some day I wanted to be just like that. However, the problem is that you don’t really have many opportunities to practice your spoken English in such a test-driven setting even though we all started learning English at a very young age. One day, I enrolled in an English institution that specializes in helping adult learners in 2007 but quickly realized that it was not what I wanted because from time to time you had to wait for your turn to speak. Therefore, I started looking for one-on-one online English course and have been steadily improving my speaking skills since then.

Fun with speaking: making milkshake and English-speaking videos

An excellent combination of reading comprehension, rewriting the text and oral presentation

There's a reading passage about how to make milkshake in the textbook, which provides an excellent opportunity for the students as well as I to have fun using English with a series of activities. They practiced skills of reading, writing and speaking all at once, which also paved the way for building that scenario simulation classroom. 

Talking about Some Aussie Culture and Career Path to be a Vet

For today's International Cultural Exchange, I invited a very special guest, Steven Yang, a student I taught the very first year I started teaching here in Kuang-Ming back in 2004, to talk about Australia, his career path, and how he overcame language barriers when moving to New Zealand all by himself at a very young age with his Aussie accent.

Developing Critical Thinking: Duterte's War on Drugs

A Killer or a Savior?

It is said that President Duterte's War on Drugs has already led more than seven thousand people to be killed by police or some sort of vigilantes, according to lots of mainstream media reports. However, Duterte has also enjoyed a very high approval rating among the Philipino people since then, which got me wondering whether the human right violation should be the only concern here.

Building a Scenario Simulation Classroom

With the 100 thousand TWD grant for winning the International School Award from the Education Bureau and British Council Taiwan, I purchased two portable projectors and screens, six tablet computers and Bluetooth speakers, a high-end webcam and microphone, complete with a PC, a scanner, a dongle and so on.