On 23rd April, Anqing Foreign Language School’s President Madam Huang Wenli and Director Xu Zuitai with the International Department led us to arrive at beautiful Hangzhou City to attend the English Education and Teaching Seminar applicable to foreign language schools and foreign language featured schools co-hosted by the Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press(FLTRP) as well as Hangzhou Foreign Language School. The content of the conference was based on heterogeneous forms for the same subject of the new curriculum standard core accomplishment. In spite of limited time, we gained a lot. The professors possessed high level in comments and reviews. I was deeply impressed by Professors Ren Zhen, Yuan Changhuan and Puchta. What’s more, the lessons of four incredible English teachers Wu Jingqi, Zhu Xiaogang, Yang Ruiying and Zhang Lei were distinctive and refreshing. Their brand new concepts and humorous talking were unforgettable.
All this time I thought it was all right that teachers worked diligently and conscientiously, let students grasp knowledge in relevant languages and grammar, make them master language skills, get points and not let students and parents down. However, all sorts of feelings came up in my mind after I heard Professor Puchta’s lecture. It turned out that I positioned myself and students too low.
It never occurred to me how to run my life or elevate my value of life. Now I will plan my teaching career again. The triviality, trivialness and monotonicity of being a teacher made teachers tired and unable to bring passionate stuff to students. Nonetheless, by means of this learning trip, I made clearer my objectives in that I understood the deep meaning of ‘Teaching Benefits Teachers as well as Students’. As Professor Puchta put it, students are human beings. They need texts to read and they also need to learn to be tolerant, curious and interested. Teachers shouldn’t put them in the box. They need to appreciate working with others. They need to experience what they haven’t experienced during the teaching procedure. Therefore, now that I chose to be a teacher, I not only hoped to have a life of self-esteem, good taste and high quality, but also was determined to improve learning wisdom, be kind to myself and others in addition to enriching my life through teaching.
To be specific, teacher Wu Jingqi was an excellent teacher, looking delicate and pretty. My first impression towards her was that her speech pace was unhurried yet quite approachable and easy-going. Besides, her classroom thinking and courseware setting were pretty clear. Though at first glance, her blackboard writing seemed a bit messy, in the end you would find out that she was leading her students to form a mind mapping themselves in order that during the consolidation process, students could easily recall the contents and frame of this lesson in accordance with the map.
On the other hand, teacher Zhu Xiaogang’s structure for the same lesson was totally different from that of Wu Jingqi. His pace of the class was quick. However, he fully considered students’ actual conditions from simpleness to complicatedness so that students had contents and topics to share. In the specific paragraph, after looking for information, Zhu Xiaogang would provide something relevant to the schools where students studied. Considering students were familiar with the contents, they involved a lot in the activity. More noticeably, teacher Zhu Xiaogang was very humorous. In the friendly environment, the class developed fast. During the classroom teaching procedure, he used his emotions to call upon students to promote their intellectual development and emotional sublimation, which constituted an effective and appreciative lesson.
In addition, the common ground of the lessons from two senior high school teachers Yang Ruiying and Zhang Lei was that they promoted writing through reading instead of simply teaching reading lessons. Since the emphasis centered on writing, the two teachers spent less time in reading. However, their instruction methods differed. For one thing, Yang Ruiying emphasized the whole structure of the passage, provided a topic and let students develop free combination in terms of a plot, main characters, a period, a place, a conflict, a climax, settings and a logline before presenting the synopsis to everyone. For another, Zhang Lei presented a large section of the article to students to let them analyze and consider which part to reserve and which to delete. Other than that, Zhang Lei’s abilities in dealing with emergencies were quite strong.
Furthermore, the reviews from Professors Ren Zhen and Yuan Changhuan were accurate. They not only earnestly listened to the four teachers’ lessons, but also observed the responses from the audience carefully. They stressed that the purpose of teaching was to mobilize students’ known aspects and seek their unknown parts in the meantime. The teaching objectives were supposed to be based on the earnest analysis of the texts, which required teachers to look through the whole essay and strictly abide by the author’s intentions instead of dealing with an issue alone when they taught each chapter. What’s more, during the teaching activities, teachers should lay emphasis on pre-reading and post-reading. The two professors’ concise and comprehensive languages were to the point and admirable.
To conclude, this study tour offered me a lot. The success of quality-oriented education is bound up with the improvement of teachers’ quality. A teacher should continuously study and expand his horizon to advance with the times. As for me, I shall continue to strive hard, explore unceasingly to become a thoughtful and successful teacher, endeavor for my ultimate goal and live up to the expectations from our leaders.