Monday 26 August 2013

Aiying Wen's Discussion Production in Week 1

Hello, everyone
My name is Aiying Wen. I’m from China. I have been an English teaching researcher of Teaching and Teaching Material Research Institute of Jiangxi Provincial Education Department since 2005. I’m in charge of guiding English teaching and assessment in junior high schools. Before 2005, I had been an English teacher in a junior high school for more than ten years. So I have some teaching experiences. Which is very useful for me as a researcher. I know which kind of problems or difficulties the teachers would face, what they are thinking about and what they need. What’s more, I go to classes twice a week. I observe teachers’ classes and sometimes record videos of their classes. After class, I have discussions on the classes with the teachers and students. Teachers love to share their ideas, worries and wishes with me. Which helps me to be familiar with their teaching and students’ learning. To know the teaching and learning situation is the first step to do teaching research, which helps me focus on teachers’s problems or difficulties.
Since 2005, I have studied three subjects on Writing Good Test Papers for Junior High School Students, Task-based Language Teaching and Developing Students’ Listening Skills. I have written 15 articles and investigation reports which were all published on the very important magazines in China. Sometimes I am invited by schools or publishing houses to make reports to teachers on English teaching and assessment.
I love my job. I love teachers. I have been trying my best to help teachers teach and students learn English happily and effectively. I hope I can do it. In order to do better, I am participating the Global English e-Learning course. I believe I can learn a lot from my dear teachers and colleagues.
Thanks a lot!  

Dicussions:
Your learners and teaching context

My name is Aiying Wen from China. I'm an English teaching researcher. What I do is to guide teachers in Junior high schools to teach English happily and effectively. I also write testing papers for Junior high school students. There are three grades,Grades 7, 8 and  9 in junior high schools. The students in junior high schools is about 13 to 15 years old. In my province most of them started to learn English in Grade 4 in primary schools, but nearly half of them did badly in English in primary schools because of big-size class and unprofessional teachers. The situation in rural areas is more serious.  
When students go to a junior high school, some of them are still interested in learning English, but some are not. The students in one class are in different English levels. This is a big challenge for teachers to teach. In junior high schools in my province, English is one of the most important subjects. Schools, teachers and parents pay much attention to students' and children's English learning. But the class is big. Generally there are about 50 to 60 students in one class. In some schools there are even 70 or more students in one class. It's really hard for teachers to care about every student. The students from the schools in the city have rich English learning resourses, such as newspapers, magazines, vedios  and so on. In their classroom, teachers can use computers to teach. But in the schools in the countryside, students have only textbooks. Their teachers usually use blackboards and chalks to teach. 
In my opinion, how to make students interested  and confident in English learning in Grade 7 is the first important.


Hi Molly,
Thanks a lot for your reply! In junior and senior high schools, generally girls study English better than boys. Because girls like listening, speaking and reading English more. They are also better at memorizing words, sentences and passages than boys.
I asked many teachers what is the biggest challenge for students to learn English. 'Words,' most of them said. They said because there are so many English words to be  memorized, they don't like learning English.
In my opinion, because teachers don't have proper ways to teach words, which makes students be bored with English. So teaching in happy and effective ways is the most important.
Warm regards,
Aiying 
Hi Molly,
Thank you so much for your reply! I agree with you that we need to change the way of teaching. You say students are sometimes too lazy to recite those new words and passages. As teachers, we should ask why students hate reciting new words and passages? In my opinion, because students think memorizing new words is boring. 
So how to teach new words is a subject we should study. We should teach new words in context. Students need to do more reading, reading conversations, passages. In this way, students know how to use the words. 
Not all the new words must be recited, such as people's names, adress names, the words which are not used often. Students only need to memorize the words which are used often in the daily life, especially for junior high school students. They can be familiar with the new words by listening, speaking, reading and writing.
Warm regards,
Aiying Wen

Hot topics of interest
b. civic engagement. In my country, more and more people have interest in engaging in social activies. First, because people's lives are getting better and better, they have time and energy to care about social activities. Second, people are getting higher and higher education. They have conciousness of sharing social activities. Third, our government hope all the people can engage in social activies. Because our country is like a big family. Eveyone have rights and responsibilities to share rights and responsibilities.
In my opinion, the more civic engagement, the better. But civic engagement should be in order. People do what they can do and what they like to do. But people must know what they should do and what they musn't do. We need a strong country and a harmonious environment.
c. women empowerment. In the cities in my region, women have equal rights in their families as men. In the rural areas, in the families or on the business, Genarally men make important decisions. Men have more rights than women. For example, my father died last month. According to the old rules in my region, only my brothers' and my brothers' sons' names can be  printed on my father's tomb stone, but my mother's, my sisters' and my name can't be printed on his tomb stone. But my father was a open-minded man. When he was alive, he said daughters have the same rights as sons. My father was hard-working, warm-hearted and kind man. I love him forever.
Now adays, some companies only take in men. They think wemen will spend more time and energy on their families. Men can pay full attention to their jobs or work. In fact, in my region, wemen do more housework in families. But I think wemen have some advantages on some jobs. S o I think the one who is the most suitable for the job can get the job. Companies can't decide by sex.
Aiying Wen   
Hi Tomo,
From your statement, we know many men still think women have to do all the housework even though they both work. In China, things are different. If husband and wife both work, they will share the housework. In my region, most English teachers are women. They work very hard. They pay much attention to their students. Luckily, most of their husbands would like to cook meals at home after work. If wife doesn't work, she may does all the housework.
In China, if a woman who works gets pregnant, she will have about 4 month leaves. After the leaves, she will continue the job. Her baby will be looked after at her home by her mother or mother-in law.
Thank you!
Best regards,

Aiying Wen