My English learning in the first cram school.


        As described in the first blog, I learned English at a cram school which made me be interested in English and finally had the goal to become an English teacher. The way the teacher taught and we learn could be divided into two main kinds. One was game-and-activity oriented, which was more impressive for me, the other was grammar-oriented that greeted the needs of the students to take tests at school. Both were quite useful for me to learn English when I was still an elementary school student and junior high school student.

        Game-and-activity oriented way was one of the teacher’s most symbolic teaching style. During the class, she would use different toys to show the contents taught that day. For example, she bought a set of automatic toys like toy trains to show adverbs like “He goes up the stairs” and “He goes down the stairs”. When teaching how to express time in English, she bought toy clocks and the students would turn the hands on the clocks. Toys did not appear in every lesson and class. Sometimes the teacher prepared cards with alphabets or vocabularies for games or teaching, which was simple but impressive for me. Every time after the class, we played games which were based on the contents taught that day. Usually the students would be divided into two groups and compete. We gained points during the games. The team which won in the end would get more points and write less homework.

        Special activities were usually held during summer and winter vacation. The teacher would make handouts before going out of the classroom. The students’ task was to follow the demand of the handouts. We went to restaurants and order the meals in English. We learned names of American food like hamburgers and learned cultures and meanings behind those meals. Another activity was going to the zoo. After learning names of the animals, the teacher held outdoor teaching and we learned various kinds of animals in person. One outdoor teaching which impressed me the most was collecting stamps in Dream Mall. Before the activity, we have learned the names of different kinds of stores. The task of that activity was to collect enough stamps from different stores and places we have learned. On the day that the activity was held, we walked in the shopping mall all day, running from one store to another and asked the clerk to give stamps to us. It was a lot of fun to know different kinds of shops at such a big shopping mall, and we never knew that the stamps of those shops were so special before this activity. Though the teacher and all the students were exhausted, everyone gave this activity positive feedback.

        Those activities were the inspiration for me when thinking about designing English courses in some courses. Learning language could be quite interesting and relaxing for beginners. Games and activities could make learners remember for longer period than ordinary classes. Thus, games and activities are what I often propose when arranging a teaching.

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