Meet Yaodong
Thanks a lot, my webheads friends! I will make every
possible use of online resources in my teaching and in helping my students to
become ICT-conscious in their learning of English as a foreign language(EFL). I
look forward to meeting more webheads online. Yaodong (Don)
Yaodong is a teacher in Liuzhou, China. We met him at
Tapped In where he looks like this:
Yaodong features in an
article that Vance has written for
TESL-EJ (Electric Online
Journal), Dec 2002
Yaodong has sent me an interesting site made by a new
teacher at the technical university where they both work. There are lots of
interesting pictures from around Liuzhou:
http://www.kcid.net/kcidNet/personal/Liuzhou1.html
|
On Feb 20, Yaodong sent this good news:
Hello,Vance,
Today I found what I need for joining the upcoming TCC
conference 2003 as a student. I hope i am not late for registration.
Starting from this year, my online teaching has turned over a
new page since our college has finally arranged for me to have a computer lab
with 60 computers hooked up to the Internet, with broadband access. I began my
first real online, f2f session of EFL lecture this Tuesday and the course will
last till June. To begin with, I introduced to my students in the second year
of their college study the usefulness of email exchanges between EFL students
and students who are native speakers. And they seemed excited at the thought
they would write to someone in a country that they had never dreamed
about,which may lead to penpal exchanges. Later on,I will show them how to use
Yahoo/MSN messengers or paltalk for real-time communications or even try
netmeetinng. To those advanced students, MOOring such as Tappedin,SchMOOze,Du
MOO, will be a possibility in the near future.
Vance, my work online has been supported from friends/colleague
worldwide,especially from you. I really appreciate your kindness and
friendship.
Thank you so very much. |
Hello, there! Fancy meeting you online today. I am Chen
Yaodong from China (or Yaodong Chen as my western friends call me, or simply,
Don ). Currently I am a teacher of English in an Engineering College in
Liuzhou, P. R. China. Liuzhou is south of Guilin,which you might know something
about.
To know something about the city where I work and live, log
on to
I got involved in online teaching/learning English in 1999
when I was a visitor in Nijmegen University, Holland, where I spent much of my
time MOOing. At present, I have students who are both English majors and
non-English majors, most of whom are eager to exchange emails with students
from other countries in order to improve their English.
Contact me if your students are interested in Chinese
culture. My ICQ number is 95360328 and my Yahoo ID is jjcyd.
Thank you for your attention. I look forward to meeting you
online. My students wish to meet students of your country. ^o^
You can see pictures of
Yaodong and his students here.
I'll move this to a separate page soon, but for now
...
This is what I wrote about TEFL in China. To understand my students
better, it is better to get to get the TEFL situation in the Chinese
context.
Yaodong
http://www.bebeyond.com.cn/BBToday/062001/BT060101.html
The Problems of English Teaching/Learning in China
It is not rare to hear teachers complain: "I can only teach English
for the sake of teaching. If I am bombarded with more explanations on language
and cultural differences, I may be at a loss."
By Yaodong, a BeBeyond Member June 1, 2001
Reading "Sorry, My Poor English" by Simple, I coud not help recalling
my two friends who I met in Holland in 1999. They both were postdocs and were
working in Holland. Their spoken English was poor and they were, therefore,
often in trouble. One of them lost his job because of his inability of
communication. His boss had grown tired of having to write down everything he
said. My friend then told me: "You are a teacher. It is your job to help your
students with their spoken English. How I wish my teachers had done a better
job when I was a student!" The embarrassment of my friend made me think a lot.
Traditionally, Chinese students tend to consider their teachers the
main source of learning, which, to a great extent, results from the
philosophical foundation for education in China laid by Confucius, one of the
greatest thinkers in ancient China. Even today, no one can deny his
unparalleled contribution to Chinese education. Many of his wise sayings and
maxims still govern the behaviour of learners in China. Take TEFL (Teaching
English as Foreign Language) for example, students are still accustomed to
speech dominated education by a teacher-centred, book-centred,
grammar-translation method and an emphasis on rote memory. There is little
student initiative and, if any at all, little student-student interaction.
Teachers who are keen on spoonfeeding their students generally receive
higher appreciation than teachers who are not. Any attempt from a teacher for
simulated interactions such as games, roleplays, talk-based communicative
activities, i.e., pair/group/team work, risks resistance or even resentment
from the students. The students tend to associate games and communicative
activities in class with entertainment and, exclusively and accordingly, are
skeptical of the use of games as learning tools. To make things worse, there
are students who may go so far as to distinguish "good teachers" from "bad
ones" solely by how many pages they can cover in their notebooks. Teachers who
advocate communicative approach to teaching English are likely, though
unfairly, to be considered lazy or irresponsible by some students.
On the other hand, a fairly large number of Chinese teachers of English
play a crucial part in the current situation of TEFL. Although China has been
on the way of opening to the outside world and many foreign experts in English
teaching are increasingly available, many of these newly-arrived teachers are
engaged in training Chinese foreign language teachers at the tertiary level of
Chinese technology specialists. The bulk of the English teaching is still
conducted by Chinese teachers, mostly trained in a traditional way, the
majority of whom have never been outside of China or talked to a native
speaker. Owing to a lack of English proficiency themselves, some Chinese
teachers find it a painful step to adjust to different teaching techniques and,
therefore, are usually unprepared when difficulties crop up in the course of
teaching. Consequently, they often give up and resort to using outdated methods
in the work. Some Chinese teachers are concerned about being unable to answer
spontaneously questions about English, sociolinguistics, or culture as they
arise from interactions in the classroom. It is not rare to hear teachers
complain: "I can only teach English for the sake of teaching. If I am bombarded
with more explanations on language and cultural differences, I may be at a
loss."
Last but not the least, the current CET-4/6 (College English Test Band
4/6), started some ten years ago, has led students to a false belief that
written English is more important than spoken English. As a result, it is not
unusual to see a holder of band 4/6 certificate very weak in spoken English, so
much so that he/she often fails to speak a complete sentence. The two examples
given at the beginning provide food for thoughts, don't they?
Yaodong reports this interesting online experience just after his
birthday, 2002
Hello,my Webheads friends,
Many thanks for the wishes! It is the first time for me to get birthday
blessings from an international point of view. Long live the Internet! Long
live our Webhead community!
Guess what I did to celebrate my birthday? I got up at 4 a.m. today ,
well prepared for the 3rd Heinle annual conference on "Teaching at Today's
Multilevel Classroom" since I believed I had made sure of the time of the
conference. I logged on at 4:05, expecting to meet the four speakers from the
USA, all of whom are experts in language teaching. It was not until 40 minutes
later that I realized my possible mistake of time conversion. I reread the
message from Heinle which came to me before my bedtime last night. I found the
time expression "at 3 pm on Feb. 6 (Eastern time)". As I had made sure that
Beijing time is 13 hours ahead of Eastern Time, USA, I began to laugh at myself
for being so silly---getting up 24 hours earlier than expected for an exciting
experiment!
Before I went back to bed at 6 a.m., I logged to
www.timeanddate.com and was happy to
find the "world clock" there. Then I found Dan and BJ on Yahoo messenger, Susan
from Canada on MSN messenger and later Torrey, an American boy of 12 who came
to Liuzhou with his parents to study the Chinese language, popped up on yahoo
messenger ( We both live on the same campus , by the way). They all assured me
that I wouldn't miss the conference at due time.
Dan praised me as dedicated to online technology and I now tend to
think that I well deserve that compliment. ^O^
By the way, I ran into a teacher from UK while waiting for the
conference when I picked him at random from www.focusfocus.com. He has promised to
meet me again and hopefully my students will meet his online. I seldom meet UK
teachers online. I wish I would meet more. Will any of you help?
My special thanks for Vance and Dan for their kindness on my birthday.
Bye for now.
Yaodong/Don
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Last updated: February6, 2004
