活動花絮-母語教學中學的英語教學經驗交流會

Topic:	What is missing in our students' English learning?
Teacher :	Miss Ip Choi Wan, Kendra (English teacher of Lok Sin Tong Yu Kan Hing School)

A. What is the full picture of language teaching/learning?		Student Works
For every English teacher, it becomes part of our routine to prepare teaching material for our students. Usually we assume that our students will build up their English proficiency if we have well-planned material of the four learning skills in our lessons and if we give them regular dictations and compositions. But is that all for language learning and teaching? Is that the end of our duty ?		Phonetics + Poetry Writing / Rhyme Student 1 Student 2 TV Report Student 3 Student 4 Student 7 News + Jounal Student 5 Student 6 Student 8

B. What are the public and private domains?
After years of teaching English, I have got to know that we should not over-estimate the impact of teachers’talk in class. We have been focussing too much of our attention on the public domain, that is, our planned classroom teaching. Equally important, we should not under-estimate our students’ potential in their language learning abilities. It is time we shift our attention to help our students explore their language learning potential in their private domain. David Crabbe (1993:451) states that ‘The private domain is not usually well-attended to and yet it is arguably where a considerable part of the learning takes place.’ For private domain, it refers to what our learners choose to learn in class and out-of-class. Once we give more freedom to our students in their process of learning, their intrinsic motivation* can be aroused. An example is given in Samples 1 and 2 that are the two interesting poems or rhymes written by two Form Two boys who are in fact good friends enjoy making fun of each other in class. The poems were written after they had learnt the Phonetics system. At the end of the course, students were given the freedom to write anything they like by rhyming the last syllable of each line. Their creativity impressed not just me but also their classmates and even stimulated the rest of their class to write more poems in their journals. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ *Crabbe, David (1993) ‘Fostering autonomy from within the classroom: the teacher’s responsibility.’ System 21 (4) pp.443-452.
C.What is our students’ potential in out-of-class activities ?
English teachers always say that the English newspaper and English TV programmes are too difficult for their junior form students, so they seldom encourage them to do any activities related to them at home unless they are heavily guided. In fact, such argument may not be justified. As far as newspaper activities are concerned, Samples 5, 6 and 8 are the work of students who do the activities on their own. Teachers only need to introduce some short articles on the Letters to the Editor of Young Post ( South ChinaMorning Post ) and then ask them to select any other articles they like and try toimitate the phrases or the style of writing. Again, it has been proved that once students are given the freedom, they will surprise you with their selection andcreativity in language learning. Such activities are particularly suitable for the quiet students who can build up their confidence and sustain their interest in the language learning through these out- of-class activities. Similarly, students can get into the habit of watching English TV programmes so long as they are motivated to do so first in class and then be encouraged to do the simple TV reports at home. It does not matter how much English they can write. What matters is their process of learning. The TV reports are just records of their work and they can get strong sense of satisfaction from their own work. This applies to students of all forms. After just one class-viewing of any English TV programme, students can start their own TV tour or VCD /DVD tour and have it recorded weekly in the report book. Their performance may surprise you! Samples 3, 4 & 7 are some examples. Some may even recommend some TV programmes to you or expect you to introduce them in class. Peer sharing moments can also be arranged before they submit their reports so that they can influence each other in the activities.

C. Conclusion
All the activities like the writing of poems after reading certain newspaper articles and TV reports can be recorded in the students’ English Activity Book that can be part of the coursework assessment. One of the keys for the success of motivating students to read English newspaper and watch English TV programmes is the role model of teachers. English teachers themselves should read English newspaper and watch English TV programmes before they can introduce the interesting material to their students. Before we blame our students’lack of active learning attitude, we teachers need to do the self-reflection first. Do remember that the process of teaching and learning English should be fun and more than grammar teaching/learning !