My fair lady

This song is from
it's the part where the professor is complaining people can't speak proper english.
I think this song fits our topic Accuracy VS fluency
of course i'll write a short passage about it, but at the mean time, please enjoy the song~

going uphill

How can learners be helped to master grammatical accuracy?

Learning grammar is just like learning a piece of music. Both needs accuracy for effective communication. If you play Beethoven with lots of mistakes and with a wrong interpration, no one can understand what you are playing. Simiarily, how can we communicate effectively if there are a lot of mistakes that destroy the message?

How do we help our students to strive for grammatical accuracy?

We can, of course, give them a lot of grammar exercise and explain all the rules to them, but this is only the work on the outside. Teachers can provide a lot of these work but students may not absorb well.

I remembered I used to have a hard time learning to play my music accuratly. The songs were too hard, the practise was too boring. No matter how much my teacher was screaming at me, I had a difficult time playing my songs. But my teacher was patient, and she showed me the beauty of music and the joy of playing piano. Slowly, practising piano is not such a difficult thing.

I guess this is the same with teaching grammar. Teachers must explaine the rules and give them exericse, but we could also show them the beauty of good English. Only their love of good English can push them up the steep hills of learning grammar.

We could show them the beautiful lines of shakesphere; lyrics of beetles, great speeches of Martin Luther King; etc.

Students may not attain perfect English at once, we must be patient. Scolding and blaming could not help one bit, but words of encouragement and a pat on the shoulder give them support to climb on.

What a complicate matter.

The more classes I attend, the more discussion I had with my classmates, the more I feel myself changing. It's fun and scary at the same time (as I'm always afraid of change). This is how I felt towards 'grammar'

I used to believe that grammar is very important. If one don't understand the sentence structure, how could one understand sentences and paragraphs? One block must built upon another to make castles.

I feel that this is changing inside me as I recall the days when I don't speak any English. Teachers in New Zealand don't teach me grammar, instead, they gave me books to read. They told me to skip the words if I don't understand them, they urge me to take gusses. By and by, I understood.

I didn't learn English through grammar, but to use English even though it's full of mistakes. You guess the meaning, you imitate other people and keep trying until they understand you.

It's just like how we learn Chinese. We write even though we don't know the sentence structure of Chinese; We speak not worrying ourselves to sound 'native' ( the most accurate Cantonese should be in Guangzhou). I'm sure the grammar in Chinese is just as complicated as English, then why, are we not worrying about them?

So is grammar important when learning English? Well, I don't know anymore.

Mr. Wong

Many of us have forgotten English teachers in our Primary school days, but I remember him very well.

His name is Mr. Wong, he's my English teacher when I was in primary four. I learned a lot from him.

I learned that you should never pick favourites in class; never hit students with anything; or blame your student for not learning her English lesson because she was sick.

Maybe it's because he's been teaching for so long, that some of the passion and sympathy slipped out of his mind, but one could never estimate how these little carelessness could affect lives.

A poem

It has always been difficult for me to work with children. Sometimes it's so much easier to tell them what to do, and expect them to obey you, because you KNOW it's good for them, you KNOW it's an easier path. I understand it's wrong to control them, but so often I forgot.
But today, I came across a poem which helped me to remember my role, and I hope to share it with you.

As I couldn't find the English translation, please excuse me to write in Chinese.

The poem is from <先知> by 紀伯倫

你們的孩子，都不是你們的孩子
乃是'生命'為自己渴望的兒女
他們是凭借你們而來
却不是從你們而來
他們雖和你們同在
却不屬於你們

My primary years

I thought I forgot how I learned my English in my primary years. They seemed such a long time ago. After reading some of my schoolmates' passage, memories, like river, flooded my mind.

I learned my English, like most of my schoolmates, in a traditional way. That is, memorizing a short passage of English each week to prepare for dictation, doing a lot of grammar exercise and so on. The traditional way of learning English has its positive side. For example, we do have better spelling and grammar compared to some English speaking countries (As I've stayed in New Zealand, I'll explain later~), but frankly, I hated English then. I hated it to such an extent that I thought if I touched an English book, I'd have to read it, and that's the last thing I wanted to do. It was that bad.

After P.4, my family and I moved to New Zealand. I couldn't speak a single sentence because I was so nervous and afraid. But New Zealanders are all very very kind. My English teacher helped me, one-on-one, to write a short diary. I remembered I felt so encouraged! Then I moved from Napier to Auckland. In Auckland, a special English class was set up for me and a few other Asians. We had to read a loud a story book every day,have role plays and parties. In the normal English class, my teacher held a speech day every semester, every student must write a short passage in any topic to present to the class. He never corrected our grammar or pronunciation, so everyone was eager to present themselves. A few of the classmate shone out because they were so funny when they deliver it, and became a 'star of speech day'!

I learned to love English because I love the world presented by English story books and movies. Of course, this method neglected a little bit of spelling and grammar accuracy, but we gained confidence in communicating ourselves.

I understand it's hard for Hong Kong to change the teaching methods at once, but I believe our attitude in class can change. May God help us!