Alberta Modern Chinese School (CCSA) Chinese teachers participated in the Chinese teaching seminar of the ASU Confucius Institute

Chinese teachers of the Contemporary Chinese School of Alberta (CCSA) participated in the Chinese teaching seminar of the ASU Confucius Institute (Contributed by the Modern Chinese School of Alberta and written by Qiuxiang) Asia...

(Contributed by Alberta Modern Chinese School and written by Qiu Xiang) Since being rated as an overseas Chinese teaching model school by the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of China in 2013, Alberta Modern Chinese School has paid more attention to teacher training. On Sunday, January 12, Chinese teachers from Modern Chinese School, led by principal Zhu Yan, participated in the follow-up seminar of the National Association for the Teaching of Foreign Languages ​​Annual Conference held by the Confucius Institute at Arizona State University.

Last November, the Confucius Institute invited fourteen teachers from Arizona State University and local Chinese schools to participate in the Annual National Conference on Foreign Language Teaching (ACTFL) held in Orlando. Modern Chinese School selected three senior Chinese teachers to participate in the seminar in Orlando. At this seminar held by the Confucius Institute, these three teachers, together with 11 other teachers, gave a report to the conference from five aspects of overseas Chinese teaching. They shared the latest Chinese teaching information they obtained from the ACTFL annual conference with the nearly 100 teachers attending the meeting, as well as their own years of Chinese teaching experience and insights.

Three teachers from Modern Chinese School have many years of experience in teaching Chinese. Their sharing has been highly praised by Professor Sima Delin, Director of the Confucius Institute. She believes that the rich practical experience of the three teachers is very helpful in solving common problems encountered by teachers in Chinese teaching and has practical guiding significance for every teacher. After listening to the reports of the three teachers, the participating teachers also felt very inspired and expressed that their time was too limited and they hoped to have another opportunity to communicate with them. Ms. Xu Zhiping (Fannie Tam), deputy director of the Confucius Institute, spoke highly of Modern Chinese School’s efforts in actively organizing teachers to participate in various training activities and striving to create training opportunities for all teachers.

Principal Zhu Yan said: In the limited time of this seminar, all the participating teachers have gained something. The school will hold another on-campus seminar after the meeting, and organize the teachers of the school and the three teachers who participated in the report to continue to learn the information obtained in this seminar, so that the teachers can learn from each other and improve through sharing. Teachers also believe that it is very necessary for teachers to learn from each other and share their teaching experiences on a regular basis. Participating in more such activities will help improve the level and quality of teaching.

A group photo of teachers participating in the training

The three teachers from the Alberta Modern Chinese School are Chen Fang, Lu Lihua and Tao Shicheng. They have been on the front line of Chinese teaching for many years and have rich practical experience. Their speeches shared new information and personal experiences of modern Chinese teaching from multiple aspects such as new teaching models, classroom teacher-student interaction, and curriculum settings.

Chen Fang explains the "flipped classroom" teaching model, which has novel perspectives, challenges tradition, and unique effects

Chen Fang

Teacher Chen Fang works in an accounting firm. Graduated from South China Normal University and worked as a mathematics teacher in domestic universities for many years before coming to the United States. Since 1998, he has taught different classes at Hope Chinese School and Modern Chinese School. Won the Outstanding Teacher Award from the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the State Council.

>Teacher Chen’s discussion topic is about the “flipped classroom” teaching model. Teacher Chen explained the characteristics of this new teaching model with vivid examples, and also analyzed the advantages of this teaching model. The traditional classroom teaching model is: the teacher teaches new knowledge in the classroom, assigns homework, and the students go home to complete the homework. The flipped classroom teaching model is different: teachers use multimedia to produce learning videos to allow students to complete knowledge learning at home. Then go to the classroom to do exercises and carry out various activities with the students, turning the classroom into a place for interaction between teachers and students. The teacher's main task is not to teach new lessons, but to answer questions and guide students to use knowledge to solve problems.

The advantages of the flipped classroom teaching method are as follows:

First, students can go back and read the content they did not understand, they can also stop to think carefully or take notes, and they can even ask teachers and classmates for help through chat software.

Second, the content in the video can be retained permanently, which is convenient for students to review or make up lessons. Teacher Chen Fang said that sometimes you can see a certain video and material clicked hundreds of times by students, indicating that students need additional learning in this aspect.

Third, the time in class is fully utilized. The starting point of teaching has been improved, and the role of the teacher has changed from "teacher" to "coach". The teacher's responsibility is not to lecture, but more to answer students' questions, test students' level, and guide students to apply new knowledge.

>Teacher Chen Fang also analyzed the challenges faced by the "flipped classroom" teaching model. For example: making teaching videos requires teachers to invest more time and energy. Students are required to have higher consciousness. Younger students may also need assistance from their parents, etc.

> Lu Lihua shares Chinese teaching methods for preschool children, which are lively, interesting, simple and effective

> Lu Lihua

> Teacher Lu Lihua is a Chinese teacher at the Modern Chinese School of Alberta, a director of the principal board, and a former teaching principal of the modern Chinese school. He was awarded the title of "Outstanding Overseas Chinese Teacher" by the Bridge Office of the State Council of China. Ms. Lu has been teaching Chinese and Chinese Pinyin to preschool children in the United States for nearly 20 years. She has rich overseas Chinese teaching experience. Her Pinyin teaching classes for preschool children are very unique and have remarkable results, and she has become a brand of Chinese teaching in the Phoenix area.

In this seminar, teacher Lu Lihua talked about her experience with everyone based on the information she obtained at the Orlando conference and her own teaching experience. The theme of Teacher Lu's report was "How teachers and students interact in class and how to enter a lively teaching state." Her speech started from her own teaching experience without much theoretical preaching. It's eloquently told and easy to understand.

>Teacher Lu said, "Classes for young children need to be lively and lively. In order to attract children's attention, teachers should focus on using exaggerated body language and vivid facial expressions." Teacher Lu gave an example, When teaching the word "happy", you should smile at the child; when you say "cry", you should frown and then hug the child; when you say "clap your hands", clap your hands; when "up, down, left, right", speed up little by little and disrupt the order, let the students follow the words spoken by the teacher to indicate the direction. Teacher Lu was speaking and gesticulating at the scene, making the teachers present feel as if they were actually in her class.

Another unforgettable part of Teacher Lu’s speech was her talk about how to use children’s songs to let children learn Chinese. 3-year-old children are not interested in lengthy or boring reciting of texts. Teachers need to constantly change the teaching format within their 4-minute attention span, for example: using familiar melodies to turn the content to be taught into children's songs. When teaching words such as: eating, washing hands, gargling, etc., Teacher Lu used the music of "Two Tigers" to sing:

"We are hungry, we are hungry, we have to eat, we have to eat, we have to wash our hands before eating, we have to rinse our mouth after eating, we have to do it, we have to do it." For both parents and children, the words and sentences are short and the melody is familiar, making it easy and convenient to memorize.

Teacher Lu also said that it is not easy to teach quantifiers. Children usually say everything as "a". Such as: a bird, a book, a mountain, a river, etc. When the teacher taught them the quantifier "head", they started referring to everything as head, such as a cow, a sheep, a horse, a person, etc. Teacher Lu downloaded some songs with quantifiers and played them repeatedly during breaks or before class. For example: "I am a little little bird", "I have a little donkey." "As time went by, the children listened more and learned to sing and memorize the quantifiers.

After the meeting, someone asked Principal Lu whether listening to songs to learn Chinese would cause children to be unable to speak well. For example, the words in the lyrics "I am a little bird, I can't fly high no matter how high I fly." The words in it did not conform to the way of normal speaking. Teacher Lu said that everything has a degree, and listening to music is just one of the methods of classroom teaching and plays a supplementary role. It cannot replace the main classroom teaching. Situational dialogue is still the main focus in class, so the negative impact of lyrics on children is not great.

Teacher Lu gave two examples when talking about how young children learn new words.

>One of the examples, "Design". For example, let students design their own classroom layout or take a self-portrait.

Students design their own classroom and describe the design plan in Chinese. Their descriptions are varied: There is a large blackboard on the middle wall of the classroom, with a literacy wall chart on the left side of the blackboard and a learning garden on the right side. There is our oval-shaped desk in the middle of the classroom. There are computers, books, pen holders, etc. on the desk. Other students can also describe their own self-portraits. They will describe themselves: my mouth is small, my hair is yellow, my eyes are big, double eyelids, etc. The students used their brains to design something beautiful, but also to think hard about the characters they had learned and how to write new characters. This method is very helpful for children to review and master new words.

>Example 2, "Spelling". Sharing from other teachers at the Orlando conference, Teacher Lu thought it was very innovative. The teacher made a word card for every word in the text. Then shuffle the order of the word cards, one student reads the text, and other children look for the words (if there are more people, they can be divided into groups), and everyone works together to complete the text. Teacher Lu introduced resistance. The teacher at the Orlando meeting showed a video of the children in his class working on the text. It can be seen that the students are very enthusiastic and anxious. When the text is spelled several times, the children will master all the words.

Tao Shicheng has rich experience and focuses on the cultivation of interest and confidence

Tao Shicheng

Teacher Tao Shicheng is a structural engineer, a director and teacher of a modern Chinese school, and a former principal. He has nearly ten years of teaching experience in oral Chinese teaching. The spoken Chinese class he teaches was launched in August 2005 at the suggestion of the then principal STEVEN TU and the teaching principal BERNARD HO. It is now in its ninth year. The Chinese speaking class uses bilingual teaching in Chinese and English, focusing on teaching daily Mandarin conversations and business terms, while also introducing Chinese culture, customs and slang. It is designed for Chinese language enthusiasts with beginner and intermediate levels.

Teacher Tao said that his students include people of all ages and walks of life. There are children aged ten years old and elderly people nearly seventy years old; there are children and housewives from Cantonese-speaking families, as well as executives from Fortune 500 companies; there are small businessmen who open restaurants, and there are large businessmen who want to do business in mainland China; there are American college students who are interested in Chinese, and there are also government officials who love Chinese culture. Teacher Tao said that faced with such a large student class, the students have different backgrounds and varying levels of Chinese proficiency. No matter who walks into his class, the first thing he needs to do is to cultivate students' interest in learning Chinese. Interest is the best teacher. If students come to learn Chinese with strong interest, they can get twice the result with half the effort. Teacher Tao’s course design and classroom teaching are based on cultivating students’ interests. He also attaches great importance to cultivating students' self-confidence, encouraging students to ask questions, encouraging students to speak and tell what they know.

Teacher Tao’s Chinese speaking classes focus on thematic situational teaching. He will choose some topics that are familiar to the students to train them. Such as shopping, ordering food, watching movies, seeing a doctor, etc. They are all familiar situations to the students. It is easy to imagine and use the language. Teacher Tao will let the students play different roles and use different vocabulary to express various meanings. Students learn through play and gain something from every class.

In terms of cultivating students' self-confidence in speaking Chinese, Teacher Tao's example is very advisable and was recognized by the teachers on site. Teacher Tao will give every student the opportunity to be a teacher in his class. After deciding on the topic of the situational conversation, Teacher Tao will designate a student as the teacher in advance, and this student will host the discussion of this topic in the classroom as a teacher. He will give the students about twenty minutes, and then he will summarize and add to it himself. The advantage of this form of teaching is that students need to think deeply about the topics they discuss, rather than passively staying within the scope given by the teacher. Teacher Tao has organized classroom teaching in this way for many years, and he found that students are very interested in playing the role of teacher. Teacher Tao is sometimes amazed by the students' ability to organize teaching. Teacher Tao himself benefited a lot from some of the students’ novel ideas. For example, once, a student was conducting his own class. After teaching the new words, he asked the students to make sentences using two or three new words to test the students' ability to accept and understand the new words on the spot. This inspired Teacher Tao. He himself always asked his students to go back and understand and digest them after learning the new words, and then make sentences. And this student asked everyone to use these new words on the spot, and the teacher will soon find out where the students' understanding weaknesses in this class are.

Teacher Tao said that his many years of Chinese teaching experience are also his own learning process. The gains and happiness his students brought him were far more than what he taught them.

After the Chinese teaching seminar at Arizona State University, Mr. Zhu Yan, the principal of Modern Chinese School, quickly convened a short meeting with the teachers of the school. She expressed her gratitude to the teachers for attending the meeting on their days off, and hoped that teachers could often share their thoughts and learning experiences with each other. I hope that everyone will work together to make the Chinese school better and better, that is, worthy of the title of "overseas Chinese teaching model school", and more importantly, responsible for parents and students. Let teachers and students grow and make progress together in the big family of Modern Chinese School.