Review Class

Today, I had a review class. I set up the class for two reasons: firstly, after teaching of five consecutive lessons, students may some time to reflect and internalize all the new vocabulary or structures; secondly, this week's new lessons are too short. There are not enough content to be covered in four classes. I was once so worried beforehand because i never taught a reviewing lesson which does not have any ready-to-use materials. But now, I feel pretty good, because no materials means that i have more freedom to create new theme to elicit conversation.

In the first two weeks, we have talked about tradition, car accident, arriving China, renting a bicycle, enviromental protection and campus or dorm security. They, although with a common context, which is China, do not have a lot of connections. But today, I used another theme, our college life at PU, to make all the learned vocabulary or structures relevant to each other and moreover, make them all make more sense to my students since their lives are college lives. I put all the vocabulary into their lives, connceting the old with the new. That is how they can internalize them. I have a few subquestions for students to answer and also through which they can have opportunities to use our learned vocabulary in the parenthesis.

1. What is your general impressions of PU? (impression, traditional, conservative, building, safe, pretty )
2. How different between what you imagined and what actually is about PU? (imagine, actuality)
3. How many different aspects does your college life have? (campus, dinning hall, dorm, homework, teachers, classmates, social life)

When we talked about different aspects of their college lives, different topics that are related to what we learned before may be brought about. For example, is PU campus a safe place? have you had expereiced of losing a bicyle? is there any pheonomenon of food waste in your dinning hall? Have you ever involved in social life or have you ever been in charge of anything? And mostly, what do you think about your relationship with your classmates?.... I was expecting to hear more about their ideas about their classmates, their friends, and their teacher... I definitly can also access their ideas about themselves.

The role I was playing in the class is a teacher, of course. But if so, I would always ask questions and expect answers, rather than a mutual communicator with my students. In the 9:00 am session, I tended to ask more questions. but in the 12:30 pm session, I took more position of students to elicit more dialogue. For example, when I asked, "Do you think teacher gave you too much homework which are useless?" A student answer:"No, I think teachers give us good homework." I responded:"No..., I don't agree with your point.". The rest of students laugh. I know some students might want to give me the "right" answer rather than their "real" answer. And I know they may be afraid of saying their real answers. So, I need to help them....