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!