【By Jiang Liu, Tamkang Campus】
For teachers, teaching in English is usually a huge challenge. How does one guide the students to actively participate in class? How does one introduce Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) methods into class? On September 18, TKU’s Center for Teacher Professional Development held a course observation and opinion exchange session, where Associate Professor Ming-Huei Lin was invited to open his “English public speaking” course for observation. Ten faculty members attended this session.
At the start of the class, Ass. Prof. Lin divided the 19 students in the class into 4 groups using systematic sampling, and asked the groups to discuss among themselves 5 questions, including “who are you”, “where are you from”, “how did you spend your mid-autumn festival break”. This was in the hope of allowing students to enhance their understanding of one another, which will also facilitate in-class discussions in the future. After that, Ass. Prof. Lin talked about 19 key points for public speaking, and then the students were allowed to discuss in their groups and categorize the key points. They then had to choose what they considered to be the most important point. Although the categorization of the key points varied between groups, all were of the opinion that confidence was the most important.
Lastly, Ass. Prof. Lin provided 7 suggestions on English public speaking for the students’ reference. During the entire class, the professor used various assistive tools, including paper strips, cards, and pictures, and constantly moved around to see how each student was coping with the materials. The process was a smooth running one, with enthusiastic interactions between not only the lecturer and students, but also among the students themselves.
Associate Professor Yuan-Lung Luo of the Department of Civil Engineering, who was one of the observers, stated, “The pacing of Prof. Lin’s lesson was tightly meshed and well linked, where each step provided ample opportunities for students to speak and participate. This would be of significant use for changing students’ attitudes and habits in learning for the future.”
▸ Tamkang Times：https://tkutimes.tku.edu.tw/dtl.aspx?no=50864
