recap for the first English teaching lesson

Today, we continued teaching the elderly the ways to asking for direction. Last time, they were taught three dialogues; this time, we went one step further: we provided them with commonly-used phrases in asking the way and allowed them to come up with their own dialogues. This pedagogical practice was adopted from our own experience in learning English and proved to be a success: the elderly got chances to practice what they had just learned in a real life situation (we drew a map on the white board) and seemed very enthusiastic. We will continue this practice in the future.
As it was the second time we went to the moral center, generally we feel more natural and at ease while teaching the elderly English. We were not timid and shy and nervous; the elderly also became more willing to ask questions. Learned the lesson from the teaching last time, we gave explicit instructions. This worked well: when we said, “one, two, start”, the elderly will begin reading the phrases given all with one voice. As we made the font of the letters in the notes bigger this time, the elderly are all able to read with ease.
Last time, in order to check whether the elderly were fine with the pace of the lesson, we repeatedly asked them whether they could grasp what we had just said. However, we never got any reply as the elderly either did not want to lose face or tried to be humble. Gained this experience, we directly asked questions regarding the content taught this time. If the elderly could answer it, we knew they had understood well.
However, some elderly also get confused when they saw the slashes in our notes (for example, turn left/right). We realized that what we took for granted might be a problem for the elderly. We will make our notes as straightforward and comprehensible as possible in the future.
One of the elderly also opined that they needed revision for the topic; otherwise they would forget all the vocabulary, phrases and sentence structures learn before long. This is rather true: after the previous lesson one of the elderly asked me to bring him another copy of notes so that he could pass it to his neighbor how could not come, however this time when I passed the notes to him, he totally forgot it. We will continuously and systematically revise the previous topics for the elderly when a new topic starts. All in all, we will cater to the specific needs of our special students.

recap for the first English teaching lesson

Today we had our second lesson with the elderly. We went earlier this time, because in the previous lesson, we did not have time to learn dialect. Before the English teaching session, the elderly there taught us some dialect. We are going to learn two dialects, Hokkien and Cantonese. Today we learned sentences related to asking the way, for example, the sentence which means that where are you going, will be pronounced like “nei oi hui bing dong” in Cantonese and “ni ai ke de lu” in Hokkien. We practiced for some time. Then we were able to pronounce correctly. During the English teaching session, we could see that there was quite an improvement of the elderly in terms of their pronunciations. We were quite happy to see that because this meant that they really spent time practicing them at home. Also, we had a new student this time, who is a Malaysian. She could not understand Chinese, but could understand English if we spoke slowly. Therefore, this is a new challenge to us and we tried to solve this problem by teaching her in English individually. Her English standard was higher than the other elderly, so we did not have much difficulty in communicating with her. Although this time we had the dialect learning session, but the period is still not enough. So we were going to go earlier next time.

the first English teaching lesson

Our first English teaching lesson at the moral center ended.
We were really happy and feel fulfilled when the elderly said thank you to us. We were happy, not for the reason that the elderly expressed their gratitude towards us, but simply because their response showed that they had learned, gained and thus acknowledged our effort.
With satisfied smiles on their wrinkled faces, and our handouts in their hands full of annotations taken down during the lesson, muttering what we have just taught, every one of them came to thank us. As they knew that we would like to learn dialect from them later, besides “thank you” and “Xiexie”, some of them showed their appreciation through dialects such as Cantonese. The little classroom was full of “thanks”, “thanks” in myriads of dialects.
The elderly were smiling, because they got to know that they were not too old to learn; the officer in the moral center were smiling, because she got to know that the moral center can also be a platform for learning and interaction; we were smiling too, because we got to know that giving made us happier than receiving.

However, all this can never be achieved without our hard work. We went down three times to the moral center before this first lesson ---- which was nearly two hours bus ride away ---- to talk with the elderly and find out their English level. We read four English textbooks with different styles to devise the most suitable and methodical way of learning English of our own for the elderly. Most of all, we always have a heart willing to serve the elderly. We repeated, explained in details or helped the elderly in pronunciation whenever they requested.

But it was also inevitable that our first lesson had some problems.
Firstly, we were not careful enough to note that some of the elderly had long-sightedness and cannot read our handouts easily because the font is too small. Next time, we will use a larger font and double spacing to ease elderly’s reading.
Secondly, we left the elderly to practice the dialogue without specific grouping and the elderly, being shy, only talked to themselves. We will take into consideration next that the elderly are not confident of their English and thus may not be willing to practice dialogue in English. More specific instructions will be given.

the first English-teaching lesson

Today, we had our first English teaching lesson for the elderly at the moral neighbourhood link. We started our lesson by introducing ourselves. After that, as we planned, Junjun and Shizhi shared a joke with the elderly. Then the atmosphere becomes relaxed. Thereafter, we introduced some of the difficult words and phrases to the elderly, but I found that for them it is very hard for them to both understand and pronounce these words. In the dialogue session, this phenomenon became more obvious. So I feel that the lesson is too difficult and too much for them. Also, they seemed to not willing to practice unless we gave specific instructions. After all, I think we overestimated their level of English. However, it is a good thing that the elderly still have passion in learning English since they recorded our reading for them to practice after the lesson. The session seems to be too short, therefore, we decided to start the session earlier next time and include fewer things in one lesson. I think that the lesson should be more light-hearted, as the elderly do not want a bombard of information. Therefore, we should let them read and practice slowly so that they can feel success. This will increase their confidence and the effect of learning will be larger.