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.
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1 comment:
I can see that you indeed put in a lot of effort and work. You are thinking and learning. Thank you for all you have done for the elderly.
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