My Days In Yale （4）

Maybe the climax of this summer session is our lectures about Chinese culture--a Walk into China. When we got the assigned task to give a series of lectures about Chinese culture in New Haven public library, I am sure that most of us felt a little nervous, excited, anxious, etc.. After all, this was a total new program for all of us, and we all wanted to show the excellence of Chinese culture. Various topics such as family policy, Chinese zodiac, Spring Festival, Hunan cuisine, filial piety, Chinese extended family, Change of marriage were presented to the public. I have chosen the topic Chinese tea culture, for tea culture is one symbol of Chinese culture. After a week’s preparation, I have made it. I rehearsed several times to designed the well-timing of the PPT to match my speech. And it proved to be rather useful and convenient. I do think all of us have tried our best. On one hand, we’ve got a chance to make the public know something about Chinese culture and refresh the stereotype of China. On the other hand, we’ve got a stimulus to our life here, which urges us to make a challenge. Thanks for the good cooperation of all my colleagues, the precious suggestions of Carrie and sweet praise of Siggy.

It is an unforgettable experience here in Yale. I’ve met a lot of friendly people who always say “morning”, “have a good day” or help me warm-heartedly. I’ve also made full use of the perfect campus facilities and library resources. I’ve really enjoyed my stay in Yale and I will always keep this summer session in my mind since I am proud to be a part of Yale although for only as short as 40 days.

I love Yale!

My Days In Yale （3）

Winwin is a good lecturer, although her teaching method is somewhat dominating because she talks a lot in her class. However, I think it may depend on the level of the students. In Winwin’s class, all the students can only speak broken English, and they seem to enjoy Winwin’s lecture and learn some interesting things such as body language. Another enthusiastic professor is Kirk, who is so famous among us before I enter his class. He is rather good at involving all the students, including us, in all his activities. No wonder I also join in his “dance” of phonetics. He arranges the students to make presentations and tapes all their performance. Each time he will give some suggestions to their presentation skills. Alan is a true gentleman who is always polite and generous in sharing with us his way of teaching. Two methods are quite useful for me. He asks students to describe one event of the weekend without mentioning the place or activity, and the rest students try to guess. The other is 2 truths and 1 dream, i.e., students write down 3 sentences about themselves, 2 of which are true and 1 is a dream. Or a similar exercise, to write three sentences, two of which are lies and one is a truth. The other students try to guess the lies. If more people guess the lies, then he/she who provides the information is in the liar’s club. Then humorous Bob is good at rousing the interest of all the students. He focuses on the eye contact, body language and intonation in Students’ presentation. Different professors do have their own teaching styles and their class activities give me a lot of inspirations.

My Days in Yale (2)

  During this summer session, I’ve been to some classes of the excellent teachers in summer session and learned many useful teaching methods. The general characteristics of the classes are smaller size and more interactions between teachers and students. To mention a few, lovely Prof. Kristy Perry impresses me deeply by her happy laughter, which also infects all the students. She is an experienced teacher who makes her class well-organized, and she holds the idea that teacher should stand by but not be too close to the students who should learn to rely on each other. In reading class, it’s a clever way that she assigns the students to prepare for some comprehension questions and discussion questions. Beautiful Lauren asks students to think about something they like or dislike about America, which is a good way of warming up. Thus I think it is rather important for teachers to prepare for some interesting questions to make students involve in the discussions. Prof. Betsy is an excellent coordinator in class, and she is good at inspiring the students’ critical thinking, especially the skills of presentation. When all the students are totally involved in discussions of Shark Tank Talk and LGBTQ, I’m quite amazed.

My Days in Yale (1)

Time flies! I’ve already been in Yale for six weeks. During this period of time, I’ve experienced a lot. The first thing comes to my mind is ESL teaching. Thanks to Siggy and Carrie, two lovely and kind tutors, I’ve learned so many useful skills.

Siggy seems to be always enthusiastic towards teaching, and she shares plenty of games and activities with us. Her class is always full of laughter. The most impressive activity is about names. We can think of various ways to recall vocabulary related to names. Such kind of vocabulary activities include words of many categories beginning with the same letter. We can’t stop playing with words and asking for more. She also introduces many funny games to us, such as apples to apples, boggle, ask away, mixed messages... Even tongue twister, drawing pictures, story telling and alibi, etc. are used in her class. I was wondering how many ideas are on earth in her mind? Must because of her enthusiasm! Besides, I’ve also learned how to make effective reading by discussing the impressive ideas and making annotations. Those methods and games can be effectively used in the classroom and I’m sure students will be rather interested in them, thus the English class may be never boring.

Carrie really helps a lot in guiding us to use blog to share our lives here in America and teaching us how to use google、Storycorps.org、youtube to search for useful teaching materials. And she helps us in finding out interesting and meaning sources for specific topics. In her class, she’s a natural story teller, who puts her emotion in reading each article and moves the audience. By asking questions and group discussion, she shows us how a teacher can help students to understand the essay better. Then good writing may follow. And her opinion of making students feel comfortable touches me. I really appreciate Carrie’s effort in preparation for each class, especially her kind invitation to pay a visit to her cozy home. I really love the garden and the comfortable rooms and elaborate decorations. It’s so kind of her to offer help and share many of her ideas in our teaching.

We have also had such happy time of outdoor activities, canoeing, beach, island, shopping, etc. I will always miss you, Carrie and Siggy!