2. I have partially implemented these five principles in my class. I feel that implications 1-4 are what I have adopted to my daily lessons to help students achieve their goals from input to output. I did not get the point of the last principle. I believe that we should always expect learners to produce the languages for communication purposes to show their understanding, through speaking or/and typing, through conversations or/and presentations. 

3. After watched Cai Laoshi’s demo video, I reflected on my own classes. The techniques that I have used well to generate comprehensible input are: 1) Use body language/gesture/facial expressions and visual aids/real/concrete objects;  2) Language/modification/simplification; 3) Contextual clues; 4) Modeling for pair/group work; 5) Age and level appropriate language use; 6) Vocabulary/grammar taught in meaningful contexts; 7) Frequent invitations of students’ responses. The techniques that I have not used well in my teaching are: 1) Use the target language almost all the time; 2) Quality input flood; 3) Appropriate error correction 4) Sentential-level pushed output. 

2. I have implemented several of these five principles in my class. I try to implement implications 1,2,3 and 5 in my classes. The class follows the routine of direct teaching, guided practice, independent practice, and assessment. I firmly believe that the more input will lead to better output, especially for the beginners. We focus more on listening, reading, and speaking in class. 

3. I really enjoyed watching Cai Laoshi’s demo video. Here are my reflections on my own teaching:

The techniques that I have used well to generate comprehensible input are: 

The techniques that need to improve on are:

2). I have implemented some principles in my class. With student-centered learning, I use "I do, we do, you all do, you do" that includes direct teaching with demonstration, prompt, and practice. Students have lots of interactions with teachers or classmates in target language. However, I know there are lots of rooms for me to implement implication 4 and 5 in my teaching. Maybe I am not totally confident about it, so I don't use often.

3). It's refreshing to watch Cai Laoshi's teaching demo. I like her teaching flows that made students to engage learning. This is one of my weakness to control the pace. Also she use target language the whole time and I have difficulty to teach in target language with lower level class. 
I have used the following techniques in my class for comprehensive input: 
1. body language and visual materials, such as pictures, PPT or YouTube videos as aids. 
2. authentic materials for meaningful/real life context.
3. using technology for formative or informative assessment, such as Kahoot, Quizlet, or Quizzes
4. Provide instant feedback

2). Have you implemented these five principles well in your class? Why or why not?

3). After watching Cai Laoshi's teaching demo and taking notes, please tell us: what are the techniques that you have and have not used well to generate comprehensible input in your class?

The most important and pertinent implications among the five are implication 1 and implication 3. First implication indicates that the more input is better for a foreign language classroom. This is the ultimate goal that we are always seeking for. Some people may argue that learners feel frustrated as they can’t comprehend content in the class due to lack of explanation in the native language. The book further indicates that the three ways of how to incorporate input into a language-teaching curriculum. There are immersion, content based instruction and natural approach. For the first two, students learn some subject matter through the language but not the language itself. The natural approach is to use different strategies to enhance the input and make it comprehensible to learners. I think this is the key to make the input comprehensible and meaningful.

The implication 3 talks the perspective from learners’ language output. Similar to comprehensible input, students’ language output should not only be the drill results. However, it should be well-structured so learners can focus on applying the newly-learned language components without worrying about organizing the structure by themselves. The challenging that I have here is that sometimes the structured output seems like drill practice to the students. Thus, I think to design comprehensible and meaningful input is crucial but to foster learners to produce language content meaningful and as expected is also key to the success.

Implication 1 can be used in Chinese language teaching. The more meaning-based input, the better learners can learn. Teachers try best to limit first language use in classroom and to immerse students in target language by adopting Natural teaching approach such as TPRS to highly engage students in ongoing activities, not through mechanic language drill, focusing only on forms. 

Implication 2: Meaning -based communicative approach: ask open-ended questions students can associate with lots of things. For beginners, more heavily structured linguistic support is needed. Interactions can engage students and make sure they aware things that are missing in their developing systems, pushing learners to become more active input processors. 

Implication ¾: Grammar teaching needs also to be designed in a more communicative and meaning-based tasks. 

Implications 5: comprehensible input. Not be too ambitious. Build upon prior knowledge. “I+1”.  

2). Have you implemented these five principles well in your class? Why or why not?

I am currently teaching in an IB school, so I implement an inquiry-based teaching approach. Vocabulary is taught by meaning-based approach. Communicative tasks are designed. There is also a focus on forms in a communicative class. Seating is grouped differently to meet different requirements of communicative tasks. I build upon their prior knowledge to provide more comprehensible input, but sometimes I think I am a little bit too ambitious. 

3). After watching Cai Laoshi's teaching demo and taking notes, please tell us: what are the techniques that you have and have not used well to generate comprehensible input in your class?

To improve:
Communicative language teaching methods.

Design tasks that relevant to students’ level. 

Gestures 

Pure target language 

 

In order to meet students’ diverse needs , teachers can focus on the three main parts during instruction,which are content, process, and products. In terms of learning styles, I use various delivery formats such as video, readings, lectures, or audio. Thinking of language proficiency, I use graphic organizers, and diverse grouping techniques. Due to different cultural backgrounds and  personality, I change their seating chart once a month, use chunked text and divide them in different groups.

What challenges and difficulty for you to create a classroom to meet the diverse needs of learners?

In general, I feel it’s hard to meet all students’ needs in one classroom setting. In my class, I have both Ab Initio students and IEP students. And also, it becomes more challenging that two of my classes are mixed-students are from grade 7 to grade 12. More specifically, I feel it’s hard to keep students to be engaged all the time, especially when I give them the time to do group work. 

Language proficiency: Use peer editing to check each other’s answers; Assign different projects to meet students’ level of proficiency; Have students share/perform their learning products.
Learning styles: Use student teacher and peer-learning activities. 

Cultural backgrounds& Personality: Assign individual students different roles based on their cultural background, interest, and personality. 

Others: Give students control for what they want to say and how they want to learn/practice in class. 

2. What challenges and difficulty for you to create a classroom to meet the diverse needs of learners?

1) It takes careful planning to connect students who have different levels of language proficiency. 

2) It is time consuming for teachers to develop differentiated assessments, activities to fit students’ different needs.  

It’s hard for me to use target language the whole time. Lower performance students would lose interest once they don’t understand. Also, I have a hard time to keep students engaging while doing group work. 

1. Stations (These are different spots in the classroom where students work on various tasks simultaneously.) 

2. Tiered Activities (These keep the focus of the activity the same, but provide routes of access at varying degrees of difficulty, so that students with different learning needs work with the same essential ideas and use the same key skills.)

3. Kinesthetic Classroom 

4. Flexible Grouping

The differentiated Classroom is responding to the needs of each learner. When we plan a lesson, we first have to find out about our students’ language proficiency, learning profiles, their interests, personality and cultural backgrounds. In a tiered lesson, students who are struggling need a more concrete assignment, while students whose levels are the highest need more abstract assignments. Students in the middle need a combination of the concrete and the abstract. 

The challenge and difficulty for me to create a classroom to meet the diverse needs of learners is time. 7 preps and two combined classes need much more time and energy to plan effective lessons.