Newsletter (2017-2018) February 2018 Newsletter | Page 15

agogy, because there were four teaching-relat-
ed courses in total. The great amount of lesson
plans that I had to write have been imprinted on
my mind forever, and because of these courses,
I started to develop an understanding of how to
design a structured lesson properly.
a map of a theme park. By using animals and the
context of theme park, the pupils showed great
enthusiasm for using English as a means to ex-
press their feelings towards the stories. Com-
pared to the traditional way of learning, the liter-
ature-based teaching approach made the young
learners I encountered much more motivated,
Among all the pedagogy courses from last year, I allowing them to learn English better.
believe the course Children’s Literature in the ESL
Classroom has inspired and influenced me the After completing the course, I found myself zeal-
most. There are many forms of children’s liter- ous in working out teaching materials based on
ature, such as fables, fairy tales, myths, picture children’s literature, so I took the opportunity to
books and cumulative tales. Ms. Clairine Chan, work for Dr. Rebecca Chen from the Department
the lecturer of the course, encouraged us to make of Linguistics and Modern Language Studies
judicious use of children’s literature in the class- last semester and wrote two sets of unit plans fo-
room, so that students can both learn the lan- cusing on pronunciation teaching. I picked two
guage and enjoy the process of learning.
well-written stories, namely If You Take a Mouse
to the Movies by Laura Numeroff and Watch Me
I could not agree more with this idea. Learning Throw the Ball by Mo Willems, who happens to
should be fun and motivational in nature. How- be my favourite author of children’s books, and
ever, I have encountered many young learners linked some pronunciation features to the plot
who dislike English, and even learning itself, of the stories. I was grateful that I could present
just because of the way school teachers teach my work to school teachers in a workshop held
them, usually through meaningless grammar by Dr. Chen in November last year. I hope that
drills and torturous vocabulary dictation. All too the in-service teachers who attended found my
often the teacher does not take the developmen- presentation useful to them.
tal stage of the learner into consideration; for ex-
ample, P1 students are still adapting to primary I have been greatly inspired by the courses and
school, but they are demanded to learn like the lecturers at the EdUHK, in the sense that I have
way P6 students do in an instant. This simply been guided to explore a teaching approach that
does not make any sense. Bringing children’s interests students and even myself as a student
literature into the classroom, rather, suits young teacher. I hope one day I can draw on children’s
learners’ needs and styles of learning, because literature in the ESL classroom and that my stu-
most kindergarten teachers use story books as dents can find real enjoyment in learning En-
a means of teaching both Chinese and English. glish.
P1 students are still experiencing the transition
from learning in kindergarten to learning in pri-
mary school, so it is better to adopt more familiar
teaching methods so that they feel at home.
I also had the chance to put this approach into
practice during the course. Three classmates
and I went to the EdUHK Jockey Club Primary
School and organised two storytelling sessions
for a group of P3 students. Every time we told
a story, they were willing to