• 2024 Jan: 44.04
• 2024 May: 41.11

It was a rainy day. The class seemed worse than usual. I had asked six different students to read the first sentance but only the seventh student had a magazine with them in the classroom. Although I was being patient the students had become unruly; some of the students started swearing randomly in the classroom in both English and Chinese. On the eighth student, I chose the ticket and that student simply refused to open their magazine. In fact after I had asked them to read they only shouted in Chinese at other students, then closed their magazine and went to sleep. It was due to this and because of the swearing that I sent a quick line message to Hawk Chen asking for some assistance. He arrived just a few minutes later with the School's Military Officer. Two students were brought out of the classroom, and when they returned we were able to teach as normal.

During the initial phase of this problem I attempted to make the lesson as easy as possible. After working with the students to pronounce each word of the sentance I chose the most difficult words to ask them. 'Color' and 'Store'. The student was able to answer, and said he knew the meaning of those words.

After the incident, I tried to rephrase the teaching and focused the lesson around three key words from the test: 7. Latest, 8. Tones, and 9. Big. I wrote sentances on the board and asked the students many questions. Here are some of the phrases and questions I wrote.

This is about Section 2 Question 7 from their weekly test. On page 52 of their magazine.

“Ralph and Isabella are walking past a clothing store. They start talking about the _(7)_ fashion trend.”

• A) keep up
• B) latest
• C) sell out
• D) big
• E) tones

The answer is 'latest'.

To help them understand I discussed the meaning of 'clothing store' and asked them what their favorite clothing store was. Some said NET, Uniqulo, and so forth.

Then 'What is the latest restauraunt in Hsinying?' –> Burger King. “What is the latest K-Pop star?” BTS. “What is the latest meal you ate?” Breakfast. Since the students appeared able to answer the questions and were paying attention then I decided this way of teaching was a success. Especially the repetitive nature of the scaffolding questions seemed to shed a lot of light on the grammar and let the students pick it up for themselves.

For the word 'tones' I mainly asked them what the color of various things were, since tones here refers directly and solely to colors.

For this phrase I wrote on the board questions such as 'What food is big in Chiayi' or 'What food is big in Hsinying?' or 'What T.V. show is big now?'. The students seemed to understand, and then our time was up.

The answers for questions 7 to 11 are worth 25% on the test so I am happy we managed to get through most of the answers, despite the diffiulties we experienced today.

Most of the kids in this classroom are just quiet and shy. So asking them easy questions which use these new vocabulary words is the best way to get them to open up and also demonstrate their learning, to gain confidence.