2023 UVA STARTALK Teacher Academy_Teacher Reflection by Gao Laoshi

Zihui Zhang

zihuiuri — 2023-06-28 17:21:53 UTC

Reflection 1:

Through learning from day one to day three, I have gained an understanding of various strategies that are crucial for establishing student-centered classrooms and enhancing language learning in online lessons. These strategies include the "I do, we do, you do" approach, scaffolding, effective elicitation techniques, and the incorporation of authentic resources that connect learners with real-life situations. I have also applied them to my mini-teaching demo lesson. For example, I use birthday party flyers as authentic materials to provide “i+1” interpretive input, ask questions about “when” and maximize students' language output time.

Additionally, the task samples provided in the textbook illustrate these principles and inspire me of creating various types of activities based on a student's language proficiency. I believe the online teadching guidelines and strategies can be applied not only in online teaching but also in in-person teaching settings. As I reflect on my own teaching practices, I recognize the importance of implementing thematically content, prioritizing student-centered tasks, providing clear structures and guidance in the target langauge, scaffolding learning tasks, employing effective elicitation techniques, and integrating authentic resources to enhance language learning outcomes.

Ran Liu Reflection 1 - 6 principles

pswhay633 — 2023-06-28 23:48:33 UTC

Principle 1: Backward design

Backward design helps me establish clear and specific learning objectives for my Chinese lessons. By identifying what students should be able to understand, communicate, and accomplish in terms of language proficiency, I can design targeted and purposeful instructional activities, which are student-centered activities.

Principle 2: Student-centered class

A student-centered class provides opportunities for students to actively participate in the classroom. I can use various activities like pair work, group discussions, role plays, and presentations to encourage students to use Chinese actively and interact with their peers. It's crucial for me to provide guidance and support throughout the learning process, especially for beginners or students who may need additional assistance. So called “脚手架”.

Principle 3: Using the target language to provide comprehensible input and generate productive output

I think total physical response, using gestures, facial expressions, and body language to support verbal communication work well in class. These non-verbal cues can help students understand meaning and context. Always use “communicative drills” and “meaningful drills” rather than “mechanical drills”.

Principle 4: Integrate culture, content and language

Culture is one of the “5-Cs”, which is very important. By incorporating cultural elements into language instruction, students gain a more authentic and comprehensive understanding of the Chinese language. It helps them develop cultural competence, allowing them to use the language appropriately in real-world situations and interact effectively with native speakers.

Principle 5: Adapt and use age-appropriate authentic materials

Authentic materials reflect real-world situations, which allows students to apply their language skills to practical scenarios. By using materials that reflect the interests, experiences, and needs of their age group, students can practice using Chinese in contextually appropriate ways.

Principle 6: Conduct performance-based assignment

I explain this principle from the example which I applied in my class successfully already. It’s in the Book 1, Chapter 9, Task 5 “人间天堂的天气”. Through this task, students can not only review the "clothes" and "what to wear" which they learned in the previous lesson, but also combine the "season" and "weather" topics in this unit. This task can train students' comprehensive language ability. What’s more, through the choice of the city "人间天堂", each student can choose their favorite city, so that they will be more enthusiastic and willing to do online research, so as to output the language they want to speak, which implements “student-centered” learning.

Xinjia Xia: Reflection 2

xxia3 — 2023-06-29 01:02:04 UTC

Integrating technology into language teaching can not only enhance teaching efficiency and provide opportunities for authentic language practice, but also significantly enhance the learning experience for students. Various technology tools and applications can help students interactive and engaging lessons.

For insurance, students watch videos on Edpuzzle and answer guided questions, record their video, and post their response before class. After they complete these pre-class flipped learning activities, they are ready for the new journey/lesson. Technology can be used before, during, and after class and provide both teachers and students more opportunities to access authentic language materials, such as online newspapers, blogs, videos, and social media platforms. By incorporating these resources into lessons, teachers can expose students to real-life language usage, cultural contexts, and contemporary topics. Furthermore, technology provides more interactive learning opportunities. Online chat, discussion forums, padlet, annotations, etc. bring learners together, so they can interact with each other and open up new opportunities for cultural exchange and language learning.

I enjoyed these vivid teaching examples from the books and videos and will explore more in the future. Of course, teachers also have to face some challenges while using technology. The purpose of using technology is to create dynamic and engaging learning environments that meet the needs of diverse learners.

Xinjia Xia Reflection 1

xxia3 — 2023-06-29 01:05:21 UTC

Reflection 1 by Xinjia Xia: In 3 days of intensive learning, I read the books and watched teaching videos and reflected on my own teaching philosophy and strategies. What I learned most are two aspects:

What the task of teaching philosophy is. students focus on meaningful and authentic tasks in the target language. Students work on tasks connecting to real-world activities. They had clear goals and willingly engaged, thus enhancing their language abilities within the natural context of completing this task. The purpose of task design extended beyond language learning, encompassing meaningful communication. Most importantly, students can exchange information, express their opinions, and provide reasoning and solve problems. I also have a little bit of sense about how to design a task, but what I learned now is not enough. I think no one lives on an island, because we can become stronger and walk faster if we have a team.

2. How the teacher scaffold students to help them succeed in the class and after class. The teacher needs to make the conversation and tasks meaningful and communicative, furthermore, the teacher also needs to apply effective elicitation techniques. Both the sentence structure and the dialogue bubbles are great ways to provide support to students. Clear instructions and modeling play important roles in scaffolding. “I do, we do , you do together, and you do on your own” seems simple, but it requires the teacher’s plan in advance thoughtfully.

Reflection 1

milk930613 — 2023-06-29 14:44:49 UTC

During the past three days, I engaged in a meaningful learning experience where I revisited important teaching principles. These principles, including backward design, facilitating a student-centered classroom, using the target language for input and output, and incorporating age-appropriate and level-appropriate authentic materials, are crucial for effective teaching. Despite already being familiar with these principles, I often struggled to implement them consistently due to the many demands of teaching. The concept of "知易行难" as mentioned by 曾老师, strongly resonated with me. I recognized that while I knew these principles, putting them into practice required consistent effort and deliberate planning.

Also, teaching videos by linlaoshi and jianglaosh showcased effective techniques and strategies, inspiring me a lot. Additionally, I am immensely grateful for the collaborative work with my team during these days. Our brainstorming sessions allowed us to share diverse ideas, tackle challenges together, and provide support to one another. I am grateful for the renewed inspiration and support that my fellow teacher have provided me.

Wenli Xu reflection 1

2023-06-29 16:41:29 UTC

By reading and watching videos, I learned how the teacher successfully operates a whole communicative class. The class provides a step-by-step course design model of 小讲、小练、小用、大用。 Whether it is a face-to-face teaching mode or an online teaching method, student-centered curriculum goals can be achieved. Learning the curriculum design mode of 小讲、小练、小用、大用 will be a milestone change in my teaching.
Second, using real-life materials can bring students' learning closer to reality. Increased use of real-life materials is another area where I've realized how much can benefit students. This is definitely one of my takeaways.
Third, due to insufficient awareness of real and fake questions, using mechanical and meaningful exercises in my teaching takes more time than communicative exercises, which will be changed in the future. Another thing I like about reading is the use of a wider variety of techniques. It offers more options and more fun for practicing synchronously or asynchronously.
Last but not least, observing the StarTalk teacher's classroom also gave me inspiration. That is, using 100% target language for teaching is possible. In particular, Teacher Jiang skillfully uses various techniques of correction to guide, remind, and correct students' mistakes, so that students can reflect and repeat correct answers.

sarahchenmeyer — 2023-06-29 20:49:17 UTC

From day one to day 3, we’ve been learning more about the principles about online teaching. Even though I’ve been teaching for a while, I was still only limited to in person teaching. Everytime I have an online meeting with my students, I get nervous because I feel like I don’t know what I can do with my students online and how to do them. Now after the three day classes, I feel more confident in my future online classes. The first thing I want to mention is that no matter what class we have, the two most important things in our language classes are communication and culture. We have to keep this in mind that the students still need to have enough time for them to practice communicating and as teachers we also need to remember to include culture in our lessons. The second thing I want to mention is that I am starting to notice that some activities we do in class are not real student-centered. Sometimes asking the students to memorize dialogues cannot be called student-centered. We need to plan ahead before we send our students to breakout rooms. The students need to be able to express, interpret and negotiate during the conversion in order to practice and improve their language skills. The last thing I really agree with from the book is to use target language in our language classes especially in our Chinese classes. The students do not have enough exposure to the target language in their daily life so we have to make the best use of every minute in class. However, this does not mean that we can speak like a “normal” native speaker. We have to switch the words and phrases into our students’ levels. Make sure they are able to understand most of the things we are speaking yet still give them some room to grow. During class on Wednesday, Dr. Tseng emphasized several principles. One thing I agree with is that teachers need to remember to always stay focused on the learning goal. It can be easy for us to forget what’s our main teaching goal when we are trying to extend the learning content, so always keep our “Can do statement” in mind. Also, we analyzed several teaching scenarios in class to tell the differences between mechanical teaching, meaningful teaching and communicative teaching. Knowing that in our class, we should aim for ten percent mechanical practice, thirty percent of meaningful practice and sixty percent of communicative practice really helped me understand better about how we should arrange our class time for future reference. Other than the theoretical learnings, we also analyzed two excellent teaching demos from our mentor teachers. Basically their classes were putting the theories into practice which helped us understand the theories better.

Li Xiang Reflection 1 (6/29/2023)

2023-06-29 21:04:18 UTC

In the first 3 days, I learned six effective principles for online language teaching: Backward design, student-centered classroom, target language, integration of language, culture and content, age/level-appropriate authentic materials, and performance-based assessments. These six principles also apply to the in-person language class.

These six principles are also the checklist for my daily teaching. Backward design is the No 1 principle. When I first started teaching in China many years ago, I just used the provided teaching materials and spent a lot of time in class just drilling the structures and grammar. Even when I moved to the U.S. and started to teach here, at the beginning I still adopted the old way of teaching, something that I was familiar with and have been growing up with. Many teachers were doing the same at that time, and many teachers are still teaching this way. Teaching without a goal is aimless and ineffective. The purpose of learning a language is to be able to use it in a real context. It's no surprise that many students complain about not being able to communicate while traveling in the target language country or a study abroad program. Students are not trained for using the language, but merely memorization and rote learning.

Authenticity is another important principle. It is easier to find authentic input, but it is not easy to find authentic materials appropriate to the age/level of the learners. Most video or audio input needs editing to make it align with the learning goal. I think the most difficult part is to simulate authentic interaction in the classroom context. I mentioned this in my 1st homework and Tseng Laoshi mentioned that it is the difference between achievement and proficiency. It suddenly cleared my confusion. I never thought of that. I was too obsessed with the pure authentic context and forgot about the pedagogical purpose of authenticity.
Another thing I am still trying to improve is the skills of corrective feedback. I feel that my efforts to correct students’ errors are disproportionate to the students’ improvements. Do students understand why they are wrong? Or they don’t understand the structure at all? Or they understand, but they just don’t want to correct the errors, as long as it makes sense and can achieve the purpose of communication because it has become a habit. As a teacher, I feel that we must be more persistent in correcting these fossilized errors. If repeated explanations or preaching do not work, maybe next time I can teach more interestingly: showing students some funny examples or misunderstandings caused by the wrong structures and grammar. Young learners may be more receptive to this relaxing style of error-correcting.

The 1st synchronous session reviewed our learning in the first 3 days. Even though I attended the workshop two years ago, I still find that there is a lot for me to learn and this session refreshed my memory and made me reflect on if I put enough focus on the student-centered communicative activities. Lin Laohsi and Jiang Laoshi’s explanation of their teaching demo further deepened my understanding of the seven principles of teaching.

Lingling Xie Reflection 1

2023-06-30 01:39:18 UTC

Over the past three days, I watched the video and read the book to learn about the effective principles for online language teaching. This learning experience has been insightful and has provided me with valuable knowledge and strategies to enhance both my synchronous and asynchronous teaching practices
During this period, I focused on two out of three key principles: facilitating a student-centered classroom and using the target language to provide comprehensible input and generate productive output. These two principles have sparked my interest in creating a student-centered classroom and performance-based tasks for the goal of proficiency.
I like the new 3ps which is present-practice and produce. This concept inspires me on how to put a lesson into a student-centered sequence, how to limit the teacher's talk and increase the students' talk, and keep reminding myself of I do, we do and you do.
Another idea for the student-centered classroom is the concept of three different drills in the language classroom. I love Zeng Laoshi's activity of identifying three different drills with teacher-centered and student center. This made me go back to think about my own teaching and my activity designing which is really not that many communicative tasks. Now, when I want to ask students a question, I need to think about if it is a meaningful or communicative drill.
On the other hand, I am kind of clear on the argument about comprehensible input and IPA. I started my teaching journey by learning the IPA. Then, I learned about comprehensible input. And I got confused about these two big theories. Now, the idea of providing comprehensible input and generating productive output connects the CI and IPA and makes them meet in the common ground. I felt more clear and confident about what I am doing.
Looking ahead, I am eager to continue exploring and learning how to implement the principles I have learned. I plan to delve deeper into incorporating effective principles into my classroom instruction, expanding my repertoire of student-centered activities, and refining my ability to provide comprehensible input and put students for productive output.

Reflection 1 （6/29/2023）

yyang132 — 2023-06-30 02:44:59 UTC

The past three days in the StarTalk 2023 UVA program have been busy and rewarding. We have learned the 7 essential principles of teaching Chinese online and observed how the 7 principles were put in action by watching Lin Laoshi and Jiang Laoshi’s teaching demos. Among the 7 principles, the “Principle 3: Using the target language to provide comprehensible input and generate productive output” is the most inspiring principle. It is the first time for me to hear the new concepts of “input flood”, and “pushed output”. It is also the first time for me to know that providing comprehensible input should be side by side with pushing students’ output. When I revisit the reading of the textbook on this principle, I keep asking myself: Did I use enough body language, gestures, facial expression, and visual aid continuously and constantly when I provide the language input? Did I use the language modification and simplification strategy to introduce the new concepts and content? Did I provide enough contextual clues for students to understand my input? Did I provide students with sufficient opportunities to make language output? In addition, I was surprised to know that my strategy of teaching grammatical structures is the mechanical drill most of the time–I ask students to fill in blanks by replacing certain vocabulary in a part of speech. The disadvantage of giving mechanical drills is that when learning becomes too predictable, students will get distracted and bored easily and teachers could check understanding accurately. I will try to change my strategies of teaching structure with meaningful and communicative drills in the future.

Reflection 1

2023-06-30 03:47:31 UTC

In these three days, I have revisited key teaching principles and got inspired by the creative lessons and remarks in the principles. Using backward design and keeping the learning goals in mind can help lessons focused. This is easy but needs a clear plan to implement. How to scaffold learning step by step in a logical way is essential and needs me to carefully design elicitation questions and deliberately planning. Through examining sample lessons and viewing the great teaching demos of Lin Laoshi and Jiang Laoshi, i have learned a lot of scaffolding skills and how to provide input flood to deepen students’ learning. Authenticity is another key but challenging part for me. Providing scenarios and linking content and culture together can help students immerse into the situation and see how they can apply. In my teaching, I usually provide meaningful contexts for applications but not scenarios. I would like to try to design in this way to immerse students in vivid situations. Finally, after learning these days, even just the beginning of the program, I feel recharged with good food for thoughts and would like to sharpen my skills more with these principles to provide advanced teaching for my students.

Zihui Zhang

zihuiuri — 2023-06-30 14:38:45 UTC

Reflection 2:

I developed a profound comprehension of educational technologies. Moreover, it has offered me valuable guidance on incorporating technology tools into my teaching practice. I believe by providing easily accessible information and facilitating interactive activities, educational technology has the power to enrich the educational journey. For educators, it signifies the principle of "因材施教", “因地制宜”, “因人而异” which can be applied in instructional methods, behavioral approaches, and more.

Additionally, I explored various of educational tools and ideas such as classroom screen, freepik, etc. As I design and implement these tools, I will analyzing the new tools and consider factors such as students' age, interests, and readiness to ensure their effectiveness.

Ran Liu Reflection 2 - Technology

pswhay633 — 2023-06-30 14:46:22 UTC

Why Tech: Technology can stimulate students' interest, especially for those mentally handicapped students with low learning motivation. Colorful PPT slides and lively FLASH animation can fully attract their attention and stimulate their learning abilities. For deaf students, the stimulus of the visual is more comfortable to their sensitive vision, and is often more accepted and understood by them than the traditional classroom teaching model by whiteboards. Also, technology can cultivate students' reasonable imagination. Especially for students with mental handicaps and learning disabilities, the cultivation of reasonable imagination has always been a difficult point in classroom teaching. Because of the wide application of modern technology, they can see any corner of the world and even outer space in classrooms, thus expanding their horizons and communication range, which greatly facilitates their intelligence as a compensation.

How Tech: 因材施教. Different students have different levels of acceptance of technology. We should accommodate different teaching methods according to the specific situation of students. Technology tools are transportation tools like cars, airplanes, trains, bicycles. However, the destination is the same. Pedagogy is the most important, as well as the teaching goal is the most important, but the Technology tools are only the ways to the destination, which is learning goal. Less is more. If one tool does all the work, we should not waste time trying to use other tools. We need to effectively use a certain tool to develop new functions. For example, analyze this tool, use this tool, evaluate it by myself, and use the student view to check it before giving it to students.

Some Rules:
Assess, select, and test technology and have a backup plan in mind.
One new tool one time.
Reduce the time for students to switch tools.
Use tools familiar to students.
Check setting and choose the numbers of tools to use at a time.

Fanrong Kong

kongfanrong0628 — 2023-06-30 20:11:42 UTC

A couple years ago I attended a CI training. I thought I understood “comprehensible” pretty well, and I used some CI strategies like TPR in my class, but it didn’t work well. I didn’t understand why the kids weren’t interested in the games of TPR. Until I read the the principle in Dr. Tseng and Dr. Gao, I started understanding that scaffolding is the key for comprehensible input. I learned the three drills. Communicative drills are really what we want to see happening in a truly communicative class. Meaningful drills are required to build a solid foundation for language development before moving into communicative discussion. The mechanical drills should be used as few as we can. Meaningful drills normally have contextual clues, such as a certain action or movement done by the instructor or students on the right spot. An extended dialogue can go from questions geared toward meaningful drills and then to communicative drills, scaffolded by the instructor. Mechanical drills should be transformed to meaningful and communicative drills.

Reflection 2

yhuang1 — 2023-07-01 01:20:52 UTC

I have learned about the benefits and challenges of technology tools and applications in synchronous and asynchronous teaching.

Benefits:

Online teaching allows students to learn Chinese regardless of the location or time constraints. If implemented in a greater manner, technology tools could provide interactive exercise with optimal virtual experiences that enhance students engagement and understanding. With peardeck, nearpod or edpuzzle integrated in the online teaching, it could be tailored or scaffolded to meet individual students’ needs and offer customized content. Most importantly, It could also provide students with efficient assessment and feedback, which allows teachers to keep track of students progress.

Challenges:

During the pandemic when I taught online classes, not everyone had the equal opportunity to access the internet at home, which may limit the learning opportunities for some students. I also believe it works better with smaller classes. With 20+ students in my Chinese I, II and III, I am hoping to learn helpful strategies and tools from UVA so that I am able to properly teach my students in the online section. Lastly, after I watched two demo lessons from Lin Laoshi and Jiang Loashi, I do have a great impression on how well both physical and virtual classes were accomplished. However, online teaching may require additional efforts to build rapport and maintain effective communication with students. Although technology provides access to authentic materials, it may not fully replace face-to-face interactions between teachers and students.

To overcome these challenges, it is essential for online Chinese teachers to adapt technology tools appropriately, provide clear instructions, and foster a supportive learning environment, among which are my weaknesses and I hope to learn from peers from UVA.

Li Xiang Reflection 2 (7/2/2023)

2023-07-01 14:41:46 UTC

The 2nd interactive session with Gao Laoshi gave me hands-on experience about how to effectively incorporate technology into our teaching. I have learned a new tool: classscreen. This tool looks very useful and I would like to have a try sometime. When it comes to the rules of technology use in the language classroom, I especially agree with Gao Laoshi’s principle of “Less is more”. Only use tools that can serve the purpose and tools that students are familiar with. There are all kinds of tools with dazzling functions that have been launched every day. Do we want to have our students try each of them? No, the selection of technology is decided by the purpose of the task and the learning goals. No need to use the new tool just because it is new. Make the best use of the tools you are now using and explore & test the new ones. Gao Laoshi gave a very simple example of PPT which has a lot more functions. A well-designed PPT can actually be used as a game board, puzzle, etc.

In using technology, we need to take both teachers’ and students’ tech literacy into consideration. How much do you and your students know about a specific technology? Do they like technology? How fast can they learn a technology? I am a slow learner of technology, so in my teaching, I only use the tools that both my students and I are familiar with. Quizlet, memrise, Vocaroo, Edpuzzle, Loom, Padlet are basically all the tools I use in my teaching. Occasionally, I introduce a new tool for students to use. In that case, I usually explore and test first, then teach students how to use it with very clear instructions and modeling. If I am not confident enough to use it, I will not introduce it to the students, which will add more confusion and create chaos in the classroom.

The Canvas site about the resources of copyright, creative commons, and fair usage demystifies the copyright issues for the purpose of education. I have bookmarked this page for future reference.

Wenli Xu reflection 2

2023-07-02 03:15:15 UTC

Comparing my own language learning experience at school with today’s students' experience, I really marvel at how technology can make language learning different. It makes language study lively, interesting, and meaningful. I also marvel at how technology creates a simulated real environment to make students more motivated and engaged in the classroom. We all know that the most effective and efficient way to learn a language is to be in the target language environment. The use of technology makes this goal close to true. In the feedback I collected from students in the past, without exception, it was mentioned that the technical assistance used in the classroom has always been their favorite. Before I came to this training, I have been using several familiar and commonly used technologies, such as Quizlet, Gimkit, Nearpod, Peardeck, Flipgrid, etc. After long use, it is inevitable to feel tired and eager for some new tools. After reading the Online Essential Guide book, and watching the class from several StarTalk teachers demonstrating class, I am excited and will gradually introduce some new tools in my classroom.

There are so many technologies out there but it’s also not good to "try anything in a desperate plight”病急乱投医“. I agree with Gao Laoshi’s notes from the meeting. First of all, teachers must try out new technologies and be familiar with them before introducing them into the classroom. Otherwise, it diminishes the students' trust in the teacher. Second, to introduce new technology, it is best to find a class (preferably senior students) to try it out for a period of time, and then decide whether to continue using it or introduce it to first-year students after getting enough feedback. The problem of using the new technology can cause frustration in learning Chinese as the first-year students are fragile stage in building relationships with the teacher. Third, more is not necessarily better. Sometimes "Less is more". It is best to introduce what is suitable for students on the basis of sufficient understanding of them.
I am very much looking forward to the next two weeks of training. I can foresee that this training will bring about a huge change in myself.

Reflection 2

sarahchenmeyer — 2023-07-02 04:18:55 UTC

I am already very familiar with in person teaching, so I am extremely looking forward to learning more about online teaching. I did my first online teaching mini lesson with my fellow teachers on Thursday. I practiced several times by myself before the actual mini lesson. But when I started the lesson, I panicked and kept pressing the wrong buttons. That’s when I noticed that I have a lot to learn about online teaching. Online teaching clearly does not just mean to teach students on computers. Dr. Gao taught us so much about educational technology during our Friday class. One picture I remember vividly is that there are so many transportations and everyone is on a different one. Dr. Gao mentioned that we cannot take all the transportations and we have to choose the ones that suit us. This is the same for online teaching. The number one rule is to know your own teaching goal in class. What do you want to achieve from the class? What is today’s focus? Is it necessary to use that technology tool? Can students benefit from the technology? Sometimes we make mistakes in class by using technology tools just because we feel like we have to use them, not because they are beneficial to the students. That being said, Dr. Gao mentioned another rule which was to try to make the best use of the tools if we use them. This sounds easy in theory. Everyone thinks they know how to use the tools since we’ve been using them a lot in class. However, not all of us know how to use all the functions of the tools. I was shocked to see Dr.Gao connect our posts on Padlet. I had no idea we could do that and I use Padlet a lot in class. After our class on educational technology, I realized that I have so much more to learn. I cannot wait for in person program!

Lingling Xie Reflection 2

2023-07-02 11:46:07 UTC

Over the past 2 days, I have explored various technology tools and platforms that have significantly enhanced my knowledge on integrating technology into teaching practices.
One of the most valuable aspects of integrating technology tools is how to integrating educational technology in teaching effectively, easily and efficiently. This is a question I need to always revisit in the future teaching. Technology is a tool to support our class instruction and to engage students in active learning. Pedagogy first, technology second. We need to balance between utilizing technology effectively and ensuring that students stay focused on the learning objectives. Choose the technology tools which can effectively, easily and efficiently support us to reach the proficiency.
Another most valuable aspects I learned from Gao Laoshi is less is more and 物尽其用。From both the book and the workshop, I have learn so many different uses of the technology tools which really inspired me and make me excited. Even the quizlet, I uses it every week and now I found out I can use it in the my activity of rearrange sentences. I love the idea of 物尽其用，which I will continue to exploring deeply the technology tools I have known. Integrating technology really require less is more. During one lesson, students shouldn't use more than two platforms which the switching of platform will distract the class and waste too much instructional time. While I am excited to learn more technology tools with Gao Laoshi, I will continue to organize the tools like GaoLaoshi with three modes and choose the effectives ones for the lesson. On the other hand, because my school is transforming to the computer based testing, I am planning to delve deeper into using technology tool in integrated performance assessment. As I continue to explore and experiment with new technologies, I am excited to see how they will further enhance the learning outcomes and experiences of my students.

Reflection 2 (7/2/2023)

yyang132 — 2023-07-02 14:26:25 UTC

I really liked the technology presentation delivered by Gao Laoshi last Friday. Gao Laoshi not only guided us to reflect on the essential questions of “what is educational technology?”, “why do we like educational technology”, and “how do we integrate technology into teaching and learning”, but also demonstrated how to use the different functions of Nearpod to deliver an interactive class.

Here I will reflect on two general principles I learned from the presentation: 1) as teachers, we are not just using some apps in the class, we are “combining computer software, hardware, educational theories and practices to facilitate and improve learning”. That is why we should use a new tool very cautiously. Some teachers like to adopt a new tool immediately after they heard or saw it in use in some conferences or workshops. Without detailed exploration of the new tool in advance, it is easy to confuse students by using it rashly. Instead, teachers should do sufficient research on how this new tool can be used to improve learning and how we can use the different functions of the tool to achieve that goal. In addition, before using any new tool in class, teachers should attend training on it and practice using it with peer teachers to test it, and then pilot it in one higher-level class. 2) Gao Laoshi also encouraged us to “Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, and Evaluate (ADDIE Model)” the use of any new technology tool in advance. It happened that I learned the instructional system major at Penn State University before I became a Chinese teacher. The “ADDIE” model provided a framework for instructional design and development . It poses a linear progression through the steps of instructional design. We can also understand it in the way that educational technology can be used to support the different steps of instructional design: students’ needs analysis, instructional design, development of online teaching materials, implementing the instruction, and eventually evaluating the outcome of teaching and learning. After we complete one ADDIE cycle, we can start another instructional design cycle based on the evaluation data.

Reflection 2

yingsinchen — 2023-07-02 15:41:04 UTC

I really enjoyed Gao laoshi’s lecture and group discussion. Through Gao laoshi’s lesson, she gave us a demo and let us experience what Nearpod can be used in class. From the lesson and discussion, I not only learned principles of integrating technology but also experienced how technology could be well used in teaching.

The picture of transportation tools that Gao laoshi showed us is a great image to how we should choose the tool for our purpose. The key is to examine what our destination/ending goal is, and to select the suitable tool to reach our goals. Technology tools can also provide different modes of learning experiences and trigger students’ motivation and interests. I am excited to explore and learn more about how to use technology effectively and efficiently with careful course design to support our teaching and to reach our instructional goals.

In addition, Gao laoshi inspired me to explore more possibilities in using technology to save our time and LIFE! Gao laoshi shared how she used technology to cope with three different levels and do differentiated instruction in one class. This may be my class situation in the near future. I think careful designed content with technology tools will definitely help me to assist students’ learning better without worrying that I split myself in class and cannot provide quality teaching. Overall, I am excited to learn how to make the best use of tools to better assist my teaching.

Reflection 2

milk930613 — 2023-07-02 16:23:35 UTC

As Dr. Gao has mentioned, "Educational technology is the combined use of computer hardware, software, and educational theory and practice to facilitate learning." What resonates with me is that educational technology is not the main focus of our class; it is merely a tool to facilitate teachers and students, helping teachers accommodate and differentiate for each student.

In my previous school, I enjoyed experimenting with various technology tools in my classroom, as each student had a MacBook. I could explore these tools with them freely. However, upon joining my current school, there are no MacBooks or Chromebook provided for each student, limiting my ability to use many of the tools I previously relied on, such as Book Creator. Initially, I struggled with this limitation as I couldn't employ those fancy technologies. However, Gaolaoshi's class two years ago enlightened me on how to effectively, efficiently, and easily integrate educational technology in teaching. The phrase "less is more" resonated with me, prompting me to focus on a select few tools. Surprisingly, these tools already encompass the functions I desired for my students, as there is considerable overlap in functionality among them.

Reflection 2

2023-07-02 21:22:47 UTC

Less is more. Technology developed very fast. The teacher should choose the certain proper technology tool which can fit the students need and instruction need. Picking one APP from one category for the students to use. Making sure the students have sufficient time to familiar with the App and time to practice in the class. The teacher needs to test the app before using it in the class. And the teacher should know well of the App and give the students tutorials and orientation to make sure all the student know how to use it. Thanks to Startalk of UVA that provide and purchase so many great technology tool for us. I am looking forward to learning how to use them to design lessons in a effective way to increase the students' interests.

Reflection 3

milk930613 — 2023-07-03 20:45:55 UTC

After our first face-to-face class today, I can't stop thinking about how I can improve my teaching for the next school year and what strategies I can employ in my future classes. I would like to share my three most significant takeaways:

Flipped classroom: Despite the concerns we raised regarding the implementation of a flipped classroom with middle and high school students, I am willing to give it a try in my class next year. Our fellow teachers have shared numerous useful strategies. For instance, the preview tasks should be concise but of high quality (重质不重量), as well as interesting to the students so that they feel motivated to learn. Additionally, teachers can provide incentives to students for completing the preview tasks before class and incorporate interactive games during class to assess their learning.
Regardless of whether it is conducted online or in person, frequent and high-quality interaction remains the key to successful teaching and learning. This includes providing comprehensible input and encouraging productive output. The first demo teaching video we watched today exemplified what frequent, high-quality interaction looks like.
During today's lesson, we also discussed how to encourage students to produce output in the target language. Teachers shared that teaching communicative strategies and scaffolding throughout the lesson would help promote both the quality and frequency of students' output. The two demo teaching videos served as perfect examples of output in the target language. In the first video, I particularly admired how the teacher encouraged student-to-student interaction. In the second video, the teacher demonstrated how to implement a dubbing activity to stimulate a flood of student output. Teachers need to scaffold and provide appropriate instructions initially, gradually releasing responsibility to students, and guiding them towards independence.

Ran Liu Reflection 3 (7/3)

pswhay633 — 2023-07-03 21:22:04 UTC

Key word: Frequent quality interaction is key to success for F2F, blended, and online learning.

Only with a large amount of comprehensible input flood, then students are able to have high-quality language output. For comprehensible input, we can use body language, gesture, facial expressions, language modification and simplification, modeling for pair/group work, age-appropriate language use, level-appropriate language use. For productive output, we need to give students practice through meaningful and communicative drills, use frequent invitations of students’ responses, give appropriate error correction, use effective elicitation techniques, and sentential-level pushed output.

Moreover, I am so impressed by Wang laoshi's teaching demo. In the short 16-minute teaching video, she used a variety of real-life authentic language materials. She applied differentiated teaching, used communicative drills, and asked personalized questions. Especially when she compared Chinese and American payment methods, she compared the differences between WeChat/Alipay in China and PayPal/ApplePay in the United States, which not only promoted the culture, but also made a comparison of two different countries. It perfectly fits the “culture” and “comparison” principles in ACTFL 5Cs. I also like the transition in Wang laoshi's class very much. She gave students enough scaffolding at the beginning. Then she practiced vocab and grammar in the real context. Finally, the big application of roleplay was also very interesting and productive which let students have freedom to practice their own language skills to show what they’ve learned as the final output. All of the procedures were logical and transitioned smoothly.

Reflection 3

yingsinchen — 2023-07-03 21:22:09 UTC

After today’s lessons, activities, and discussion with other teachers, I got many A-ha moments and got inspired by many creative ideas and teaching techniques. Pre-task activities should be 重质不重量. Assignments should let students feel motivating and interesting to motivate students to work. Preview tasks must have instant feedback so not only students can see their performance instantly, but also teachers can receive some data on how students have learned to better prepare for lessons. I also feel excited to see great examples and have chance to closely examine teaching episodes. From the analysis of these great examples, I have learned how to design effective elicitation techniques, how to catch opportunities to push student-student interactions, and how to promote a positive and safe environment for students to try and reach learning goals. It is clear to me that how effective elicitation techniques and scaffolding play in successful language learning and teaching. It requires me to well-design and pay attention to the details in designing my scaffolding questions and each step in tasks. I have to closely design and examine my teaching to provide input flood and create frequent quality interaction. After viewing these great examples and how students enjoyed the class, I cannot wait to try new ideas and improve my own teaching. Concluding with what I have learned from Tseng laoshi’s medication, I feel so grateful to enjoy this program and learn from everyone.

Lingling Xie Reflection 3

2023-07-03 21:22:11 UTC

The first day lesson was an exciting and eye-opening experience for me. Laoshi men gave me the online teaching strategy input flood and I tried to push the output with the takeaways, which are how to give "input flood" and "pushed output".
How to give input flood?
Before the lesson, we need to create interesting tasks for homework to let students preview the lesson and prepare for the lesson. It is very important!
During the lesson, frequent interaction with students, scaffolding, and gradual release of responsibility. Only use useful and correct sentences in the instructions. Use guided questions to frequently invite students to respond. Provide comprehensible input with authentic pictures and keep checking for understanding. Always use sentential level structure, even teaching new words.
How to push productive output?
Create meaningful and communicative drills and tasks for the students. Modeling and scaffolding to push students' output step by step. Create student-centered activities for students to practice and demonstrate.
In today's lesson, another valuable experience is learning from different teachers. We not only learned from the teaching video we observed but also learned from the teachers in the classroom. We improved our skills in observing other teachers through the group discussion and tried to improve our presentational skills through the group report. Now, I am energized and motivated to continue learning and refining my approach, and changing my mindset.

Reflection 3

xxia3 — 2023-07-03 21:31:02 UTC

While reflecting on the first day of the intensive UVA STARTALK program, I thoroughly enjoyed reviewing five essential principles, watching two instructive videos, and engaging in discussions with fellow teachers. The most significant lessons I learned were “input flood” and “pushed output.” The concept of comprehensible input flood encompasses employing TPR teaching strategies, modifying and simplifying language for students, modeling pair/group work, utilizing appropriate language for appropriate level, and ensuring language is contextually appropriate. On the other hand, "pushed output" involves meaningful and communicative drills, regularly inviting student participation, error correction, and sentential level pushed output.

Upon self-reflection, I have identified two specific areas to focus on in my own teaching:

1.It is important to provide students with meaningful and relevant contexts. Designing task-based activities that weave together a cohesive storyline creates a real life context for students to solve real-world problems. This approach allows for the integration of vocabulary, sentence structures, and language functions within the task's context, teaching language functions in a purposeful and communicative manner.

2.I aim to enhance scaffolding techniques in my instruction. This includes integrating grammar functions into tasks, offering guided questions, and adjusting my language use to my students' proficiency level. By utilizing simpler vocabulary, sentence structures, and incorporating gestures, I can make instructions and explanations more accessible. Additionally, gradually releasing responsibility to the students is important too.

Beyond these aspects, I am eager to explore more on designing engaging preview assignment tasks and the effective use of technology tools and platforms to facilitate output practice. I appreciate this great opportunity to learn from each other and grow together with fellow educators.

sarahchenmeyer — 2023-07-03 22:29:23 UTC

reflection 3:
After today’s class, I had more time to think about my current teaching practice. The first thing I learned was flipped classroom. I’ve always had concerns about giving my students assignments before class. I want to keep the learning content a surprise so my students would be more interested during class. For example, I like to show my students a funny picture or video and then provide guiding questions to introduce the learning content. However, today one of the teachers mentioned that I can still use these materials. I can use these as pre-class questions so the students can start preparing the vocabularies and sentence patterns. This could be a game changer. My students will have more time learning the content and start preparing. Teachers can give them instant feedback and know what we need to emphasize during class. This way, we can actually save so much time in class and use the valuable time to help students practice their language skills. Another takeaway is that teachers need to be more patient and start the good habit early to help students with the target language output. We all have that experience that when we want our students to talk about something in target language, they would start with target language and then switch to English when they start talking faster. Dr. Tseng mentioned that I can teach them sentence patterns about how to ask about something they don’t know in the target language. This way, they can use target language and still ask their questions. The last takeaway is that as teachers, we can do a lot of pre-class lesson planning, but some in-class quick responses should be in our DNA. During our mini lesson observation, I noticed that one of the students brought authentic material to class. The teacher didn’t just make a quick comment, she immediately used the authentic material to ask the students to ask each other questions and then she also asked some questions. This was a great example of how to respond to students’ similar behavior. We need to use everything that is happening in our class to create an authentic learning environment to help our students with their language skills.

Zihui Zhang Reflection 3

2023-07-03 22:30:26 UTC

First, after comparing and discussing various modes of online teaching, I strongly believe that consistent interaction serves as the cornerstone for effective online and blended teaching. To enhance the process of consolidated learning, I will incorporate pre-class tasks as do now or homework prior to regular classes for ten to thirty minutes. These tasks may be a range of activities such as Edpuzzle, Quizlet, and others.

Furthermore, I will utilize the teaching examples and guidelines for creating authentic settings and themes that integrate culture and authentic materials. Teaching video critiques provide examples and guidelines for designing authentic settings and themes integrated with culture and authentic materials. I am impreses by Wang Laoshi’s lesson as her instructional design seamlessly transitions between different questions while effortlessly incorporating cultural elements into language learning. For example, she poses open-ended questions to students, comparing payment methods in America and China, introducing the concept of the red envelope, and integrating them into interpersonal, task-based conversations.

Lastly, I reinforce the importance of a growth mindset by actively engaging in discussions and idea-sharing with fellow group members. We delve into topics such as leveraging context clues and gestures to maximize comprehensible input, as well as how to effectively incorporate online tools into education. When mentioned encouraging students in using the target language, I will provide enough guided questions to support students, improve student’s communication skills in the target language and build student’s learning habits in future teaching.

Li Xiang Reflection 3 (7/3/2023)

2023-07-03 22:41:26 UTC

This morning I learned the online Teaching Essentials & Effective Principles (part 1). We compared the six different types of delivery modes, the comprehensive cycle of consolidated learning, the importance of pre-and post- tasks, and discussed the use of tools in flipped learning, etc. In the afternoon, we reviewed the survey on 美国线上中文教学互动与应用程序使用情况 and had a lot of findings. In the afternoon we also observed two video segments and had a group discussion to analyze the two segments. I have learned so much from discussions with other teachers, from the assignment of pre- and post- tasks, and challenges of online teaching, to strategies of input flood and pushed output. I have a lot of takeaways from today’s learning.

First, today’s learning has consolidated my conviction that to achieve a desired learning outcome, teachers should assign pre- and post-tasks before and after class. Content and the form of the tasks must be carefully reviewed and selected by the teachers.

Second, I was deeply impressed by the elicitation techniques of the two video segments in input flood and pushed output. Take Wang Laoshi’s video for example, I especially like the way she left some lines blank in the role play to push students’ output after some scaffolding at the beginning. Also, the skill of scaffolding and the gradual release of responsibility in Dai Jing’s video greatly inspired me. All these techniques help students to produce the pushed output independently.

Third, techniques of error correction. I noticed that both Wang Laoshi and Dai Laoshi gave students constant corrective feedback in a variety of ways. Sometimes they asked students to repeat the sentence to give students a 2nd chance to correct themselves, sometimes they gave the first half of the structure and waited for the students to complete it, sometimes they gave the correct structure directly. I think that I can use a lot of their corrective techniques in my classroom to correct students’ fossilized errors. Many errors are caused by the negative transfer from students’ native language. Correcting these errors takes time, but not impossible.

Today’s learning and discussion also made me rethink our group’s lesson plan and authentic task design. I like in-person learning and am looking forward to more discussions with other teachers in the coming two weeks.

Reflection3

2023-07-03 22:50:36 UTC

What a tight and productive first day! My takeaways from the beginning of the class. Zeng laoshi talks about the merging of mindfulness with teaching: when one feels high pressure, try to think about gratitude. I will adopt this in my class.
The second change of my mind is about how to set up a students' friendly, motivated, effective pre-task. The pre-task activity I used before was more focused on vocabulary reviewing, which did not get many of the students involved in doing so. After watching the presentation on how teachers can use various techniques such as playposit to let students watch videos and answer questions, google form set up questions, quizlet pictures, and Quizlet regroup the sentences, etc, I see the possibility of how to start building a comprehensive cycle of consolidated learning.
Thirdly, when designing the tasks, make them spiral up and each is connected to the previous one and smoothly transitions to the next and adds up to higher and more complex content. The two videos I saw are no doubt of a great job on this. The second video "配音“use the reverse activity which is similar to teaching toddler kids to walk. Give the hands first to help them build the structure of the conversation then step by step take hands back. After five rounds of practice, two students eventually can have the conversation independently even with some creation.
Fourthly, in today's class, I saw the great "flood input and pushed output" examples. The more of the teacher's quality input strategies such as TPR, use of age and language-appropriate input, Q & A, here-and-now, etc, as well as the teacher's productive and pushed output activities such as meaningful drill tasks, scaffolding skills, frequent feedback, Appropriate error corrections, sentential -level, the better the students reach the goal.

Reflection 3, 7/3

yyang132 — 2023-07-03 23:59:11 UTC

My take-away from Monday’s activities consists of the following two points: 1) designing pre-tasks for flipped classrooms. As a high-school teacher, I usually assign homework after school. That habit changed until I started developing a dual-credit class for my senior Chinese Immersion students, collaborating with a faculty member from North Central College. According to the weekly schedule that faculty member provided, students’ weekly work included pre-tasks, in-class tasks, and post-tasks. Students were expected to preview the learning materials outside of the class in advance. The in-class time was then used for understanding check, inquiry, and class-discussion. The post-class tasks were purposed for applications and assessment. So today’s class discussion on the topic of designing pre-class activities was inspiring. I will use the strategies that the peer teachers suggested for designing the pre-class activities in my class in the future: first, the pre-tasks should be short in time (5-10 minutes); second, the pre-tasks should be interesting, attractive, and relevant to the class topic; and last, the pre-tasks should be interpretive activities, eg. understanding and comprehending short text, short-video, signs, images, or audio clips. 2) Gradual release of learning responsibility. I learned this strategy from Dai Jing Laoshi’s teaching demo. She had her students play roles to add voice to the movie three times, however, those three exercises were not simple repetition. The first time exercise was like a modeling, with teachers providing a lot of prompting questions, a lot of gestures, structure frameworks, and dialogue templates. In the second exercise, the teacher took away some questions, structure frameworks, and some dialogue hints. In the third-time exercise, the teacher took away more scaffolding strategies and only provided the basic dialogue template. In that way, students were given more opportunities and freedom to create their dialogue. The sequence of learning activities shifts the learning responsibility from the teacher to the student. The goal of this strategy is to help students gradually transfer learning on their own, which is in alignment with the ACTFL standard that “students will use language skills in a real-world situation in a spontaneous and non-rehearsed context”. I will use that strategy in my class in the future to foster confident and motivated learners.

Reflection 3

2023-07-04 01:00:51 UTC

My today's take away are the following three points.
1. Pre-task. Designing fun and quality pre-task and get instant feedback is very necessary and important. That can help teacher to know what is the weakness part for the students' learning and adjust the instruction.
2. Wang Laoshi's teaching video really impressed me. I learned how to do the transition and connection from one step to the next step. In her lesson, the guiding questions not only is the main line of the lesson, but also provide sentence structure and vocab for students to answer questions, that play a role as scaffolding.
3. In the second teaching video, the teacher give me a great example how to do the dubbing task. There are 5 steps as I observed. The first step, the teacher gave questions before the students watch the video. When the students were watching video, the teacher asked the questions and students answered instantly. The second step, after watching the video, the students answered the same questions and the teacher gave the instant feedbacks. The third step, the students had a conversation according to the video screenshot and bubble dialogue. The forth step, the screenshot and bubbles were taken off, the students had the same conversation as the third step. The fifth step, students complete dubbing task. In the whole progress, the teacher built solid scaffold, and let students have constantly repetition and productive output.
Today is a very productive day. I'm grateful to come this program. I learned how to use the effective strategies to build up scaffolding, do the pre-task, design the guiding questions and make smoothly transitions.

Reflection 3

yhuang1 — 2023-07-04 03:45:14 UTC

We started the day with mindfulness led by Dr. Tseng, which allows me not only to be grateful for everything we have had, but also reduces stress. I strongly believe that mindfulness can be a valuable tool to enhance my own well-being as a teacher and create a positive teaching environment for my students. I will definitely incorporate mindfulness into my class routine in my future class, which not only benefits my students to have a positive, supportive and engaging learning environment, but also nurtures my own well-being as a teacher.

After mindfulness, I have learned from Dr. Tseng about the effective principles for online language teaching. It does give me more confidence of how an effective, interactive and engaging online classroom could greatly and positively impact students’ learning. In order to make the content more dynamic, I should incorporate not only authentic materials, but also interactive and engaging content through using multimedia resources, such as videos and images that are more personalized and real-life examples.

Besides, through watching two demo lessons, I found it very important to have clear communication and objectives that could scaffold students with what they will be learning and provide them with a roadmap of what they could succeed step by step through teachers’ facilitation. I should incorporate not only the meaningful drills but also the communicative drills which allows students to produce their own sentences. However, pre-task is a must for me to adjust my teaching to meet the students’ different needs.

Furthermore, I also will explore various educational technology tools and platforms that can enhance online teaching, especially more collaboration tools and engaging platforms that can contribute to more effective and interactive online teaching.

Lastly, continuous improvement is a very important step of being a better educator. In order to do that, collaborating with other teachers and seeing feedback from teachers/students can be beneficial to enhance my teaching skills.

Zihui Zhang - Reflection 4

2023-07-04 19:05:36 UTC

After learning today’s content, I have developed a more profound comprehension of cultural authenticity. It includes not only genuine materials but also encompasses the authentic settings, resources, activities, and communication processes. In my future lesson plans, I will prioritize the inclusion of cultural authenticity, particularly when designing authentic settings. Additionally, I aim to incorporate a diverse range of authentic tasks, such as gallery walks, digital storytelling, four stations, suspicious guessing, and more.

Furthermore, in order to promote learner-learner interaction, I plan to employ innovative strategies that foster engagement and collaboration. One approach I will utilize is the creation of 3D virtual spots or slides, incorporating videos, audios, pictures, and detailed descriptions. These immersive multimedia elements will serve as the initial step in the learning task, providing learners with an authentic context and a sense of immersion. By leveraging this technology, students will be able to explore virtual environments that simulate real-world scenarios, enabling them to interact with the content and with their peers in a dynamic and interactive manner.

Moreover, these immersive experiences will encourage learners to interact with one another, fostering collaboration and meaningful exchanges. Students can discuss and share their observations, interpretations, and reactions to the virtual environments, promoting dialogue and a deeper understanding of the subject matter. This peer interaction will not only enhance their comprehension but also cultivate important communication and social skills.

Finally, upon evaluating the table comparing the three modes of interaction, it becomes evident that learner-content interaction is similar in both synchronous and asynchronous learning. This understanding allows me for a more efficient use of class time, with a greater emphasis on learner-learner and learner-instructor interaction. By assigning learner-content tasks as pre-tasks or homework, students can engage independently with the material, fostering a sense of ownership over their learning. I will optimize class time and focus on interactive exchanges. I also believe students have increased opportunities to practice and apply their language skills, resulting in higher language proficiency levels and a comprehensive understanding of the subject matter.

sarahchenmeyer — 2023-07-04 19:35:57 UTC

Reflection 4:

During today’s class, we learned about how to create authenticity. Before I thought authenticity only meant showing students a Chinese speaking video. Today, Dr. Tseng taught us the four main elements of creating authenticity which are context setting, materials, process of negotiation of meaning and tasks. When we were in class, we watched an authentic video of an ad. Normally I would show my students the video and then ask the students to describe the ad and then that would be it. I was so amazed to see how Dr. Tseng did her class. She first showed students the six sentences matched with the pictures, then asked students questions about the questions and then provided a higher level of reading material for the students so they can be more familiar with the material and then they can learn more useful and more complicated sentence frames. This way, we can use the same authentic material in different language levels. In the end, the students can choose to do a narrative or do a dialogue about the video or they can do a follow up video to complete the story line. From this example, I understand how important scaffolding is for students. If teachers only show students the video and then ask the students to directly do a dialogue, they would have trouble with the task. Also, from this example, I understand that teachers should make the best use of the authentic material we can find. We do not focus on looking for so many different materials, sometimes it’s what we do with the materials matters, not the materials themselves. Other than this, another video taught by Ms. Cai really caught my eye. We only watched a short period of time, but we can already feel the scaffolding and how important the guiding questions are in our language classes. She used the students’ answers to form a new sentence and then kept adding new grammar into students’ answers and also in her own questions. This type of recycling and spiraling up can maximize students’ learning outcome. I think I should try this type of teaching practice in my classroom.

Ran Liu - Reflection 4

pswhay633 — 2023-07-04 19:36:15 UTC

Keywords for today: Frequent quality interaction

First of all, I realized that authenticity not only includes authentic materials, but also includes authentic contexts and settings, process of negotiation of meanings and tasks. The rules of choosing authentic materials are: interesting, motivating, real-life, updated and native-like. To create an authentic task, we can use digital storytelling, gallery walk, treasure hunt, roleplay, interview, etc. All in all, we need to apply all kinds of authenticity in our classroom.

Second, I was impressed by the “麦当劳薯条” task. I understood how to fulfill “one more little extra” in the lesson plan. We’d better push up students to the next level by giving them conjunction words to create a paragraph rather than 6 individual sentences. Students can tell the story by asking “wh” questions and using a self-assessment sheet to check for understanding. It’s important to give enough scaffolding for students to meet the learning goal.

Third, I also liked the “睡觉睡得晚” teaching demo. I learned that I need to use authentic context to practice grammar. We always need to correct errors in the context timely. I think that recasting a correct answer for students is a good strategy.

Last, I learned a lot of useful technology to apply the task-based teaching, such as homestyler (to design a room), thinglink (to design a video), and Bookcreator (to make an E-book). I also want to use Classdojo as a class management tool in my class next year. I believe Classdojo will motivate students’ engaging learning.

Reflection 4

xxia3 — 2023-07-04 20:26:27 UTC

I believe that exceptional teachers should add “a little extra” based on the diverse needs of our students. Here are my reflections based on the McDonald video teaching:

1.Adding a little of scaffolding: For novice to intermediate students, it is essential to guide them in taking notes and discussing guided questions to prompt their thinking about what should be included in the report and what might be missing.

2.Recycle the same materials: It is beneficial to provide various tasks of the same authentic material. Provide novice, intermediate students and advanced students different keywords, connective structures, and detailed explanations.

3.Including a moment of pause: When pausing the video, the teacher should encourage students to share their predictions, allowing them to explore their cognitive abilities rather than merely answering mechanical drill questions.

Additionally, peer review/editing offer opportunities for interaction and communication and peer review/editing can be guided by a set of concise instructions.By giving students with key sentence structures and rubrics in the guidelines, they can engage in purposeful and meaningful editing and reviewing.

Furthermore, technology can greatly enhance teaching practices. I intend to incorporate the online classroom management tools during the fall semester, particularly in lower-level classes. I will implement ClassDojo. This system will feature a rewarding component, where students can design personalized avatars and describe characteristics such as eye color, hair style, and clothing. Additionally, I will utilize timers, make class announcements, create random groups in this system, and display the system on a screen for the entire class to see.

By implementing these strategies and incorporating technology, I hope to create a more engaging and effective learning environment.

Lingling Xie Reflection 4

2023-07-04 20:32:38 UTC

Today’ s lesson is a wake up call for my learning and light up and stimulate my brain to deeply reflect on my instruction and approach.
I always know that the weakness of my approach is the part of my instruction. I can design good IPA tasks but sometimes students can’t produce the language as I expect. I don’t know how to fix the problem and improve my instruction. Today’s lesson gave me the answers.
First, always create the authenticity for the students. The authenticity is not only authentic context, materials, tasks, but also the process of negotiate meaning and conversation.
Second, the most important things I learned are the different takeaways Zeng Laoshi show us in the tasks. They are all little strategies in different lesson, but they are all the keys to effective teaching. FREQUENT, QUALITY AND INTERACTION IS THE KEYWORDS. Always remember to improve students’ cognitive thinking skills such as predict, summarize, solve the problem and make decisions. From pause the video to let students predict to design different levels of interpretive tasks for one authentic materials 一鱼多吃, Zeng Laoshi showed us how to ask questions, how to scaffold, how to create all kinds of opportunities for 生生互动。All of these are the strategies, and all of these need us to remember, reflect, repeat in daily instruction.
Third, the most important strategies in teaching is how to ask quality questions and how to correct students’ error in order to push them produce the expected language. Cai Laoshi’s video is a very good example to demonstrate how to embed the structure in the daily conversation and correct students’ error in a nature way. All of these require us to keep practice until we do it naturally.
In summary, I plan to keep reflecting on my pedagogy, continue to practice and cultivate my teaching skills, pay attention to the details and do the little extra to move up the students’ to achieve the goal of proficiency. Becoming an excellent teacher might take a long time, but I will be patient, consistent and diligent to move toward the destination.

reflection4

milk930613 — 2023-07-05 00:04:36 UTC

I was deeply impressed by the advertisement video task from McDonald’s today. It perfectly demonstrated how to use authentic material for students at different levels and how to push student from novice to intermediate, and from intermediate to advanced levels. We all utilized the same video, but there were those little extra elements that were crucial for teachers to push students to the next level.

Student-to-student interaction is an area where our teachers really need to focus on, whether it is synchronous or asynchronous. Peer-editing is an excellent strategy for increasing student-to-student interaction. I was particularly inspired by 曾老师's lesson on how to implement peer-editing. Allowing students to have their first draft edited by a peer or a group of peers, and then revising their work based on rubrics is a fantastic idea. I will definitely give it a try in my own class.

I also found the metaphor of the wood train and the spiral-up picture intriguing. It made me question whether my curriculum is more like the train or the spiral-up picture. Unfortunately, I feel that my curriculum aligns more with the wood train metaphor because every day, I contemplate what my next lesson should be, rather than having a big picture plan from the beginning of the school year. I will start building my curriculum map over the summer and explore how I can transform my curriculum into the spiral-up model.

Reflection 4

yhuang1 — 2023-07-05 01:06:59 UTC

We started the day with shoulder and neck exercises led by Dr. Gao, which is very helpful to reduce the tension and/or headache from stress. From the morning section led by Dr. Tseng, I have gained several substantial takeaways. First, the efficient ways of asking enough input questions need to come with grammar structures and follow-up questions. Thus, it would produce more meaningful and communicative output from students. After watching the demo lesson, it does remind me of how I can best adapt my input questions that need to be more spontaneous and guided to facilitate the students’ answers with appropriate error correction. Second, creating linguistic and cultural authenticity is essential for fostering a rich and immersive learning environment that needs to be based on can-do statements. In order to do this, I need to incorporate authentic language materials with real-life examples that come with well-designed tasks. These tasks need to be tailored not only with 3 modes of communication but also arouse students’ abilities of problem-solving, summarizing, cognitive thinking, decision making and reasoning. In the meaningtime, providing the scaffolding is a must to move students up to the next levels. Third, enhancing learner learner interaction is crucial in online teaching as it promotes collaboration learning, peer support, and a sense of community among students. I learned that well-designed tasks should not only be completed between teacher and student, but also need to be reviewed by peers through commenting and editing. In my future planning, I will assign group projects or discussions that require students to work together toward a common goal. I will encourage more collaboration, problem-solving, and the exchange of ideas among peers first before I actively look into or correct their final products.

Fourth, facilitating student-centered activities in breakout rooms is an effective way to promote active learning, collaboration, and engagement among students. However, well-planned activities before the online class is a must. Students need to be given assignments before lessons, during lessons and after lessons in order to maximize students’ learning results. During lessons, students need to be put into breakout rooms and complete the projects in which they can demonstrate their collaboration, stimulate meaningful conversation and provide constructive feedback on their peers’ ideas.

Lastly, I learned how to use some great tools to help with classroom management and activities. For example, classroom screen and class dojo both could efficiently reinforce students’ positive attitudes and behaviors.

Li Xiang Reflection 4 (7/4/2023)

2023-07-05 01:15:55 UTC

Another rewarding day! The first takeaway is the deepened understanding of authenticity. Last year, I learned that authenticity is more than authentic materials. It has four components: authentic materials, authentic tasks, authentic context, and authentic negotiation of meaning. This year I understand the difference between pedagogical authenticity and authenticity in the real world. Many times I feel confused about authenticity in the sense of performance and authenticity in the sense of proficiency. I think I was misled by the wording of the definitions of authenticity, such as “...created by native speakers for native speakers”, “real world”, “real audience”, etc. Those definitions of authenticity are misleading. In my opinion, as long as it is contextual, situational, pedagogical, and interactional, it is considered as authentic.

The second takeaway is the process of spiraling up from simple tasks to more complicated tasks with frequent quality S-S interaction. The design of 自我介绍 in CHIN 3010 showed me how to integrate authenticity, scaffolding, three modes of communication, and the upward spiral of tasks. In the next few days when we work on the designing of the lesson plan, these samples we learned today are great examples for us to follow.

The third takeaway is the art of asking guided questions to achieve the desired purpose. We observed the first 2 minutes of Cai Laoshi’s teaching demo. It is my 2nd time to watch Cai Laoshi’s teaching video and there are always new findings that I can learn from. Besides the strategies of error correction, I noticed the switch between individually asking questions to the whole class. I also learned how to turn students’ output into the input of the follow-up questions.

Reflection 7/4

2023-07-05 01:34:41 UTC

My takeaways from today:
1. "A Good design is not to give answers, but to stimulate students' cognitive ability, and to achieve goals by letting students use the process of guessing, reasoning, induction, discussion, and problem-solving." Zeng laoshi used 3 tasks to perfectly elicitate how to design a lesson from the primary level to a higher level by using this rule. Students discuss the story, guess what the person will say, extend the story, etc. The whole task is fun and has a negotiation process.
2. Using Authentic contexts for presenting and designing tasks. Siheyuan's project and Peiying laoshi's 3D bedroom design allow students to be creative and are very interesting. Multimodal presentations such as PPT, Video, 3D, animation, and pictures allow the input vivid, and close to real-life experience.
3. How to improve student-student interaction during pre-class, in-class, and after-class periods. Zenglaoshi Showed some skills including providing guidelines, scaffolding for writing, and grammar correcting skills for students' peer review. This really helps me as this was one of my goals I want to learn at the reflection in the first reading which aspect(s) we want to improve.
4. One of the demo videos shows how the teacher uses student's output to change to the teacher's input and then pushed to the next output is also a good point I will adopt in my class.
5. I am very interested in the two classroom management tools Gao laoshi demonstrate today. They are engaging and very useful tools for teachers. I will absolutely try ClassDoJo.

Reflection 4

2023-07-05 01:43:17 UTC

In the demo of McDonald's advertisement, I learned the strategy of improving the students' cognitive ability. A good task design should not be only one fixed answer from all the students. It could be an opening end and the students can produce vary answers. I also learned how to build scaffold to move students to upper levels. The same authentic material can be reused in different levels. The students can have all the learning evidences in their portfolio to prove their growth.

Reflection 4 (7/4/2023)

yyang132 — 2023-07-05 02:22:07 UTC

My favorite online teaching example was the “薯条万万岁“. I want to talk about the three strategies I learned this morning. First, When the teacher played the short video, she paused before the ending was presented and asked students to predict the ending. When we involve students in higher-order thinking or critical thinking skills, such as predicting, hypothesizing, inferring, and making decisions, we help students to apply the language skills to a higher level. The prediction questions were also a good hook to attract students’ interest. Second, the teacher provided a scaffolding tool for students to move from novice level to intermediate level, such as adding elaboration, setting details, cohesive devices, and emotion description. It is important for students to understand the expectations from a higher language proficiency level. Third, the same authentic material could be used for students with different proficiency levels. The instruction can be differentiated by designing different tasks. We can reuse and recycle the authentic materials and design age-appropriate and level-appropriate activities to allow students practice communication skills in three modes.

Reflection 4

yingsinchen — 2023-07-05 04:35:53 UTC

Through Tseng laoshi's excellent lesson designs and teaching examples, I was inspired by his clear explanations of the logic behind lesson design. I learned that I need to use different methods to increase authenticity and design tasks that can challenge and utilize students' cognitive abilities. Tseng laoshi's example of selecting suitable authentic materials and designing spiral-up tasks for different levels demonstrated how to make the most of the materials and differentiate the design.

In addition to peer oral interaction, it is important to provide clear instructions to guide students in giving peer written feedback. With guidance, students can learn from the revision process. Through multiple examples and teaching demos, I learned how to use diverse elicitation questions to flood students with input, scaffold their learning, and create frequent quality interaction to maximize peer interaction.

I would like to re-examine my own teaching and carefully design my instruction and tasks.

Xinjia Xia Reflection 5

xxia3 — 2023-07-12 17:31:12 UTC

I am genuinely excited about applying what I learned at UVA Startalk to my community, school, and class. The UVA Startalk program's unique focus on preparing “in-service Chinese language educators to teach online as a primary or supplementary instructional mode.” During the past few months, we explored backward design lesson plans and tasked-based/supported teaching philosophy systematically; Furthermore, we implemented authentic materials and technology into our teaching. I reflect my three teaching aspects and I will incorporate these to my teaching:

1.Scaffolding: Scaffolding plays an extremely important role in language instruction . The teachers not only break down complex tasks into smaller and more manageable steps, but also recognize students’ need to support their learning process . We learned many strategies and techniques to scaffold students effectively, such as using dictogloss strategy to learn authentic materials, providing clear instructions, incorporating dialogue doubles, and recycling target vocabulary and sentence structures. I will reflect on the progress I observed and applied in the mini teaching through the use of scaffolding techniques and then redesign my teaching plans in the future.

2.Authentic materials: Incorporating authentic materials into Chinese language instruction is important; however, how to use authentic materials in our teaching process is not easy. I have learned how to select and adapt authentic materials to match students' proficiency levels and cultural interests, how to simplify the difficulty of the authentic materials, and how to adjust the different tasks of authentic materials to different levels. I gained a deeper appreciation for the authenticity and relevance that these materials bring to the classroom.

3.Teaching passion and enthusiasm: The teachers in the UVA Startalk program showed their teaching passion and enthusiasm. Dr. Tseng, our coaches, and twelve selective Chinese teachers brought their experiences, teaching styles, ideas, and genuine enthusiasm to the team and we got inspiration from each other. The most important thing I learned is “leader for tomorrow”. As a Chinese teacher, we need to stand out and to help our students and community to become better and better.

Reflection 5

pswhay633 — 2023-07-13 14:37:50 UTC

After two weeks of study, I deeply felt that my teaching was deficient.

The most important reflection is that I used to speak 70% in each class, and the students only produced 30%. As a result, the consequence was that the teacher took away the students' opportunity to speak. When I give lectures in the classroom in the future, I will give students more opportunities to produce, strengthen student-student activities, and reduce teacher-student activities.

Regarding PPP versus task-based teaching, I think that even my previous teaching followed the PPP principle, but the final production part was too limited, so that there were too many teacher-fronted and too few student-centered activities. In the future, I want to use more task-based teaching to encourage students to produce their language more efficiently.

Teaching is like picking fruit from a tree. As teachers, we should help students build ladders and let students climb up and pick the fruits by themselves. However, I used to climb up the ladder myself and I gave the fruit to the students. In this way, I took away the students' opportunity to learn and practice critical thinking by themselves.

All in all, whenever I make a lesson plan in the future, I will check whether I speak too much, and let the students produce too little, so that I take away the students’ words. It is important to consider students as the center of the class, and let students be the main characters of the classroom, so that they can talk more and do more.

Li Xiang Reflection 5 (7/13/2023)

lxiang — 2023-07-13 23:12:23 UTC

Two weeks of in-person learning at UVA Startalk is coming to an end. My group collaboratively completed a unit of 3 lessons on AI technologies and tested these three lessons among the group. I also observed the other two groups’ teaching videos and learned a lot from other teachers.

The biggest takeaway for me is how to select and adapt authentic materials for pedagogical purposes, and how to deal with a variety of authentic materials. Finding age and level appropriate authentic materials takes time and sometimes can only be encountered by chance. Sometimes, teachers need to cut, adapt, and edit the text/audio/video materials for pedagogical purposes. Design different tasks based on students’ language proficiency levels and purposes. One authentic material may be used multiple times for students at different proficiency levels and can be used from different perspectives.

This year, I learned a new way to deal with authentic materials—dicto gloss. This task proves to be very effective to get students actively engaged in learning and finding out their learning gap through a sequence of tasks on one single audio/video clip. Tseng Laoshi had us test it out with her. The meaning-making process with the dicto gloss shows how our brain processes new information. In processing the audio input, learners first use their prior knowledge, word recognition, phonemic & syntactic feature recognition, etc., to process the new information, then our metacognition selects the different features to reconstruct the text. The gap between the learners’ reconstructed text (output) and the original input (in this case, the audio/visual materials) is a deficiency in learning. In dictionary gloss, learning happens when students compare the reconstructed text and the original input.

I am very grateful to have the opportunity to work with all the teachers this summer and learn from each other.

Reflection 5

wenlixu426 — 2023-07-14 00:50:41 UTC

I have been in my comfort zone for a long time. I am lucky to have this opportunity to participate in this training. Million thanks to Dr.Zeng.
My biggest harvest is the breakthrough in my teaching philosophy. During the Covid period, I felt a strong teaching bottleneck and eagerly looked for some changes. There was a lot of information online but it is not enough for me. My previous teaching was stuck by using the textbook and followed by the topic and I have used project-based ideas for years. Although using the backward design, the students’ output is unsatisfactory. Dr. Zeng’s task-based and technology-supported teaching idea is completely concept change. And the other teachers have demonstrated that technology-assisted language teaching opened my eyes to how the use of tech can effectively help students get closer to the target language learning and achieve the task-based goal.
Secondly, the improvement in my teaching skills. After reading Dr. Zeng's books as well as watching other teachers’ teaching and reflection, I discovered many treasures. Using tech-supported classroom activities; curriculum scaffolding; student-student interaction; using pushed output, using authentic materials, etc.
Last but not least, I experienced personal growth from teamwork. I really find that a successful project is the result of the collaborative work of a group of people.
I will absolutely share my learning from here with my colleagues.

Lingling Xie Reflection 5

2023-07-14 03:21:47 UTC

Participating in the UVA Startalk Program has been an incredibly rewarding experience for me. This program has significantly enhanced my teaching skills and pushed me to reach new heights in terms of task based lesson plan and instruction. One of the highlights of the program was the opportunity to engage in peer teaching lesson plans and critiques, where I gained new insights and knowledge from Zeng Laoshi, Lin Laoshi, Jiang Laoshi, Gao Laoshi, Song Laoshi and my fellow educators. It was beautiful!
The effectiveness of task-based teaching in the program cannot be overstated. All of us were filled with laughter and joy throughout the learning process. I was able to effectively design the tasks with my peers and gain the knowledge and experience that led to noticeable improvements in my future class instructions and assessments. The two important things I need to always remember in my future teaching are task based and student center. It was truly impressive!
The peer teaching sessions proved to be highly effective in helping me refine my teaching approach. I was able to identify and address my weaknesses or areas for improvement, and through perseverance and determination, I managed to overcome obstacles and continuously progress. It was a dynamic and inspiring journey, and we all motivated each other to excel.
The program also emphasized the integration of technology in language teaching. I discovered and explored various innovative tools and platforms in language teaching. Each day brought new technological sharing, which added excitement and dynamism to my teaching practices. It was fascinating to see how technology could enhance the learning experience and engage students in many ways.
Another aspect of the program that I found invaluable was the development of questioning and elicitation techniques. The constant interaction with students and frequent invitations of students’ responses helped me refine my teaching skills in asking thought-provoking questions. Additionally, I learned the importance of providing appropriate error correction to facilitate students' language production. These techniques have proven to be highly useful in scaffolding students in producing languages.
Finally, the program emphasized the power of teamwork. Despite the challenges and demanding schedules, our team worked tirelessly, displaying great determination and unity in pursuit of our common goal. We supported each other, overcame obstacles together, and achieved remarkable results. The spirit of collaboration was truly inspiring.
In conclusion, the UVA Startalk Program has been an enriching and transformative experience for me. It has elevated my teaching skills, expanded my technological repertoire, broadened my knowledge of authentic language materials, and sharpened my questioning techniques. Moreover, the program reinforced the significance of teamwork and the importance of a supportive community of educators. I am immensely grateful for this opportunity, and I am excited to implement what I have learned to create an even more engaging and effective learning environment for my students.

Reflection 5

zihuiuri — 2023-07-14 18:29:39 UTC

Firstly, I have acquired valuable experience through collaborating with other teachers by engaging in demo lesson critiques and maintaining communication during lesson planning.

Secondly, I have familiarized myself with the principles and steps involved in the planning process, including providing authentic settings, comprehensible input, encouraging student-student communicative output, and more.

In addition, I have expanded my knowledge of a wide range of online tools such as classscreen, thinklink, storyjumper, canva, and others.

Looking ahead, my goal is to incorporate more authentic settings into various tasks and seek out authentic materials that provide appropriate levels of challenge (i+1 input). Additionally, I will continue exploring ways to integrate online tools seamlessly into my curriculum.

Reflection 5

sarahchenmeyer — 2023-07-14 18:33:26 UTC

Time flies! I cannot believe we are already at the end of UVA Startalk.After three weeks’ online and in person learning, I’ve learned a lot from Dr. Tseng, our three mentor teachers and all of my fellow teachers. The first takeaway I want to mention here is that I’ve learned a lot about task-based teaching. This new way of lesson planning can help me see my teaching process more clearly. We can monitor if we are providing enough time for our students to produce comprehensible output. During lesson planning, our group made a mistake. We focused a lot on teacher presenting rather than focusing on students’ feedback and interpersonal communication. In the future, I will definitely always remind myself to monitor my own lesson plan to prevent a teacher-centered classroom. The second takeaway is that I learned a lot of technology tools. For example, one teacher shared a link called Homestyler. This fits in the theme of our group which is about different rooms. We can introduce this website to our students and give them a chance to create rooms they like and then they can record an introduction of their dream room. Another website I really like and will be using in my classroom is StoryJumper. This website provided different modes for students to choose. At the beginning of a school year, each student can start creating their own book by introducing themselves. They can choose to type on their book, they can also add audio to the book. This way the students can practice different language skills in one assignment. And later on in the whole school year, teachers can give them different assignments based on different themes we learn. At the end of the school year, they can choose to print their own books out and share them with their families. This way, everyone will be more motivated to create their own books. The third thing I want to mention is that students can benefit a lot from mindfulness. During the past two weeks, we always start the day with some mindfulness. Sometimes we did some Taichi, sometimes we meditated and sometimes we danced. I found these all helpful. I felt more energetic after the mindfulness.

Reflection 5

yingsinchen — 2023-07-14 20:11:45 UTC

It was very worthwhile to attend the UVA Startalk this year. I enjoyed every day and learned a lot! Here are my main takeaways.

1. Designing a task requires a teacher to think from students’ perspectives and scaffold carefully. From tasks created by other groups and examinations on my own tasks designed for my students, I have learned that clear guidance, guiding questions and scaffolding structures do make a task successful. It requires a teacher to think thoroughly and prepare related materials well. Before, I might lack some detailed instructions or structures that can scaffold students for students to push more output. I would assume all my students had understood the instructions with my explanations. Now I will consider more about lower-level students and provide more scaffolding for them.

2. Depending on topics and students’ proficiency, I have learned how to decide when to use task-supported teaching and when to transfer to task-based teaching. I would like to try and challenge myself to do more task-based teaching. I feel it was a challenging task but full of fun and surprises. Different teachers will design a task differently. I am also inspired by Tseng laoshi and other peers in designing tasks with suitable authentic materials. In addition, I would like to try building spiral-up tasks with the same authentic materials. 知易行难，Learning by doing. Only through my own practice, I can learn more from the whole process.

3. Furthermore, the most important thing is to create contexts and opportunities for students to negotiate meaning and push more real communication. I would like to do more, think more, add some fun ideas and use technology to make a lesson 更出彩。Overall, I have learned from peers and mentors to shape and reshape my understanding of task-based teaching. I am excited to push myself to create a more student-centered class and make my class more fun.

4. Last but not least, I have been inspired by the enthusiasm and positive mindset of all my peers. I have also learned how to communicate with others effectively. I would bring all the positive energy from them to my daily life.

Reflection 5, 7/14

2023-07-15 03:08:39 UTC

From June 26 to July 14th, I spent 3 weeks in the UVA STARTALK program, reading books, listening to lectures, participating in class discussion, and designing and delivering online-teaching modules with my team. I am glad that I had such a positive and productive time during the three weeks. Below are some of my reflections.

1. The reason to choose tasked-based instruction

The task-based approach to instruction can greatly facilitate students’ learning process. By engaging in meaningful tasks, such as role-plays, group projects, and real-life simulations, students are able to practice and apply the language in authentic contexts. This approach can not only enhance students’ language proficiency but also foster their ability to communicate effectively in Chinese. This approach also engages students to think critically, problem-solve, and adapt to different situations, thereby preparing students for real-life interactions.

2. Tasked-based learning is not activity-based learning

Before I came to the program, I thought that designing task-based instruction means designing a lot of activities around the unit themes. After I learned this topic in depth, I realized that task-based instruction is neither like the traditional activities of emphasizing memorization and drill of grammar, nor like the more recent approach of designing a lot of fun activities to make students busy. First of all, task-based learning centers around authentic tasks and real-life communication, with all of the vocabulary and structure practices embedded within the tasks. Second, task-based learning is designed to fulfill the learning objectives, therefore setting up clear learning objectives at the beginning of the design is extremely important. Third, task-based learning could not succeed without teacher’s scaffolding, including comprehensive input, error correction, effective questions strategies, and appropriate use of the authentic materials. Last but not least, all tasks are designed in a logical sequence, transferring from teacher-fronted meaningful drill of language to student-centered communicative activities.

reflection 5

2023-07-15 14:19:15 UTC

Over the past few days, our group has developed a sequence of three lessons. We are all excited to implement these lessons in our fall teaching and feel proud of our product. Throughout the lesson planning process, we collaborated and critiqued each other's teaching moves. This process demonstrated that teamwork really works!

Here are some of my takeaways:

Can-do statements should always be the priority. After watching all of the group's videos, I realized that teachers need to prioritize can-do statements when planning lessons. What we want students to do at the end of the lesson (backward design) is always the most important thing in our lesson planning. Therefore, every episode of the lesson should prepare students well for the final product.
How to use authentic materials: I have learned many practical strategies for choosing and using authentic materials. For example, before viewing the material, to engage students in authentic materials, students can make some predictions. Students should have questions next to the video when they are watching it. Additionally, “dicto gloss” is a very engaging and interactive activity that I have learned in the past few days.
Teaching culture is an essential part of language education. This includes cultural products as well as cultural perspectives and practices. However, teaching culture in the target language can be challenging, especially when it comes to conveying cultural perspectives. As a teacher, I have faced this dilemma many times throughout my teaching journey. But I have learned that it is crucial to make the teaching of culture level-appropriate and relatable to the students. This can be achieved by incorporating cultural elements that are familiar to the students or by using real-life situations to illustrate cultural differences. By doing so, students can gain a deeper understanding and appreciation of the language and its associated culture.

Reflection 5

kongfanrong0628 — 2023-07-16 19:23:54 UTC

In the past two weeks in person learning at UVA Startalk, I have a incredible learning. It's a unforgettable journey. I not only found the pathway of task-based instruction, but also explore my leadership potential deeply and grew up every single day. Attending UVA Startalk is one of the best decisions I made in my life. I really appreciate everything Dr. Tseng has done for us.
The biggest take away this time is that I learned how to use authenticity to give students comprehensible input and make them produce push output.
1. The authentic material should relate closely to the topic. It can be the main line go through the whole lesson.
2. One authentic material can be used repletely for different tasks in one lesson. The video of interviewing AI is an impressive example. The first time watching, students need to summarize the main content. The second time watching, the students need to find out the key words for the questions. The third time watching, the students need to use whole sentences to express the answers.
3. Before watching the video, the teacher need to give the guiding questions ahead and go over the questions with students together to make sure they understand. The guiding questions should be next to the video, so the students can see the questions when they are watching the video.
4. Not edit the text, edit the task. One authentic material can be used in different levels' teaching. The key is how to design the tasks which can fit in the students language level. Both authentic voiced and voiceless videos can be designed as a task to use.

Reflection 6

uva2021startalk — 2023-11-06 15:45:09 UTC

What are your substantial takeaways?

What I need to improve urgently is to achieve "student-student interaction", but this is not easy. In the past, I used to talk most of times in class. However, in the new semester, I try my best to talk less and let the students talk more. In this way, we can achieve a student-centered classroom.

Any noticeable difference between the lesson plans that you created in the summer program and real teaching in your local classroom this fall?

Not every student likes to participate and speak, so sometimes teachers need to provide various kinds of help to get them to speak.

What was working well and not working well in the fall online teaching?

Work well:

Pretask，Application of online interactive software, such as edpuzzle, nearpod，Visual assessment of student work, such as nearpod, padlet；

Not well:

"student-student interaction", After asking the question, I need to wait for the students to respond. Don’t take away the students’ time and opportunity to express themselves.Sometimes the software has permissions to enter, and the teacher permissions are different from the student perspective. You need to confirm in advance whether students can log in and edit (Padlet)

To what extent that student-centered learning and the use of the target language in authentic settings have changed your teaching and students’ learning?

I believe that "student-student interaction" is the key to student-centered teaching, and I will continue to work hard to strengthen this in future classes. "Teacher-student speaking percentage" From now "70%: 30%" to the end the goal is "50%: 50%"

Li Xiang Reflection 6 (11/10/2023)

lxiang — 2023-11-10 17:47:05 UTC

Takeaways:

The biggest takeaway is that I have learned how to design a task-based lesson plan with a sequence of tasks. I also learned the strategy of creating suspense in classroom instruction instead of feeding the students by answering at the beginning, so students can be motivated to complete various authentic tasks. For example, in the lesson plan, for each specific task, we usually ask students to guess, then discuss, and finally present their viewpoints. The third takeaway is the strategy of Dictogloss when students are required to listen for details.

Difference between the lesson plan in summer and real teaching:

There is not much difference between the lesson plan our group created in the summer and the real teaching: The only difference is that in actual in-person teaching, I divided each lesson into four classes, and used three office hours to provide support for students to complete the pre- and post- tasks. Also, due to the unfamiliarity with the listening strategy of Dictogloss, students spent longer time than planned in the original lesson plan.

In the future, this strategy can be incorporated into daily teaching when dealing with difficult interpretative listening tasks, so students will get used to it.

Overall, the application of the Unit Plan in the fall is very successful. If it were not for the collective efforts of all the group members, the actual delivery of the AI Unit wouldn’t be so successful. The slide deck is very carefully designed and sequenced by students’ cognitive development. The age-appropriate and context-appropriate authentic materials and tasks are loved by students.

3. Student-centered learning and use of the target language:

I think I have improved a lot in student-centered learning by using authentic tasks in my teaching. Sometimes I film my teaching and keep track of my talking time and students' talking time. I watch the recording and reflect on my teaching later. Meaningful authentic tasks are the key to drive a lesson. By instruction, I do not mean teacher talk (teacher-centered instruction), but students talk （student-centered learning). By talking less, in the classroom, I am busier with coordinating the tasks with the help of slide decks, error correction, checking students’ understanding, timekeeping, etc.

I am very grateful that I have had the opportunity to learn and grow with all the teachers and mentor teachers this year. The more I learn, the more deficiencies I have found in myself, and the more I feel the need to improve. The learning journey never ends.

lxiang — 2023-11-10 17:48:00 UTC

Reflection 6

milk930613 — 2023-11-12 00:42:09 UTC

Takeaway of UVA Startalk

Application of new ideas: I implemented various new teaching strategies and tools that I learned from the UVA Startalk program in my classroom this year. For example, I incorporated Gao laoshi's Chinese reward system, which significantly increased student participation and results. Additionally, I started using Padlet for students' exit tickets, allowing them to track their progress over time.
Focus on student-centered classrooms: I have become more conscious of creating student-centered learning environments. I regularly review and adjust my lesson plans to increase student-to-student interaction while reducing teacher-fronted instruction.
Emphasis on teamwork: Through interactions with peers, especially during collaborative lesson planning with advanced group teachers, I realized the importance of teamwork. I now seek help from colleagues, exchange ideas, and ask for suggestions when facing challenges in lesson planning or teaching. I have discovered the value of learning from every teacher.

照片

milk930613 — 2023-11-12 00:50:02 UTC

Xinjia Xia_Reflection 6

2023-11-12 01:56:52 UTC

1.What are your substantial takeaways?

Three goals I set for myself before coming to UVA STARTALK: to learn task-based teaching methods, to integrate technology into instruction, and to meet like-minded friends. Not only did I achieve these three goals, but I also gained much more:

A positive mindset established closer teacher-student relationships, fostered both academic and emotional development, and improved my problem-solving skills. When faced with challenges at work, I now approach difficulties more positively, seek solutions, and learn from the experiences.

Furthermore, after the summer StarTalk program, I studied Teacher Tseng's three handbooks, gaining much inspiration. I adjusted and modified many of my teaching plans, and I believe that the result of this changing journey is very rewarding.

I also have applied Classroomscreen in class management and guided students to engage in dialogue and communication through conversation bubbles. Students have also used Canva for menu designs and birthday invitations, and Microsoft Office for timetable design. These new technologies and concepts have contributed significantly to the growth of both me and my students.

Finally, UVA STARTALK is a home in which we can share teaching resources, foster a positive learning atmosphere, and work together for the same goal.

2. Any noticeable difference between the lesson plans that you created in the summer program and real teaching in your local classroom this fall?

Due to differences in the students, instructional hours, and students' language proficiency, my teaching objectives are different from the summer plans. The categorization framework of daily life (clothing, food, housing, and transportation) was a major component of the summer design. However, in my 50-minute lesson plan, I omitted this framework for two reasons: firstly, the limited time does not allow for comprehensive coverage of all aspects of daily life education; secondly, Piedmont High School doesn’t offer a school bus and parking lot, and there is no accommodation facility. Therefore, we focus on the education aspect.

3. What was working well and not working well in the fall online teaching?

Thanks to the wonderful teamwork of the 高级组 and the guidance and assistance of Teacher Tseng's team. What was working well:

Authentic Context and Smooth Teaching Tasks: The journey to Xuejun High School involves three tasks progressing step by step, involving three modes of language communication. Post-class Assignments is an extension from oral language communication in the classroom to written language communication, providing students with an engaging platform.

What was not working well: I realized that my instructional language wasn't concise enough. Additionally, during student-student discussion stages, there is potential for enhancing student interaction and communication. It is evident that cultivating effective student-student discussions is an ongoing process. As teachers, we should assist students in finding the right learning and communication methods from the beginning.

4.To what extent that student-centered learning and the use of the target language in authentic settings have changed your teaching and students’ learning?

The shift towards student-centered learning and the use of the target language in authentic settings has significantly influenced both my teaching approach and students' learning experiences. I will continue to apply Task learning and more meaningful and communicative communication in my class. I believe that student-centered learning encourages active participation and engagement. Furthermore, students can take more responsibility for their learning.

Xinjia Xia's photo

2023-11-12 01:59:13 UTC

Reflection 6

kongfanrong0628 — 2023-11-13 19:30:39 UTC

What are your substantial takeaways?

I learned how to design a task based instruction lesson. I start to put more effort on designing the efficient questions and providing scaffolding and take away the scaffolding at the proper time.

What was working well and not working well in the fall online teaching?

Task support instruction works well with my students. They need the teacher to provide the scaffoldings to build up their storage of knowledge to complete the different tasks.

To what extent that student-centered learning and the use of the target language in authentic settings have changed your teaching and students’ learning?

Authentic settings attract more interests from students and it’s more related to the real world. They are eager to learn what is going on in the target language world.

Reflection 6

jmeyer148 — 2023-11-14 23:38:22 UTC

It's hard to believe my journey with UVA has come to an end. I have learned so much from all the teachers I met at the Startalk program. From spring 2023 to Fall 2023, I have grown a lot. The things I learned from all the teachers are not just about how to be a better Chinese teacher but also how to be a better person. The first takeaway for me is that as Chinese teachers, we should value our coworkers. Being in a team can help us become a more thorough thinker and be more creative. If we only work on our own, it’s easy for us to overlook so many details. Details do matter in teaching. After the summer program, we went back to our schools and recorded our online lessons. I noticed that it’s hard for me to implement my online class into my normal teaching. So my coworker helped me alter my lesson plan which eventually made my online teaching possible. The second takeaway is that as teachers we should really focus on what we say in class. It’s easy for us to pay attention to what our students are saying since we need to be able to correct their mistakes. But as teachers, what we say in class can affect our students so much because they also need plenty of comprehensible input to help with their target language output and the input should be i+1. The truth is when teachers are talking, we always repeat ourselves, use words that are way too difficult for our students or sometimes even have the habit of talking to ourselves. Dr. Tseng mentioned that it’s easier said than done. I do agree now. Before my online class recording, I even wrote down some notes. One of them is that I should pay attention to what I say in class. but when i was watching the video, I realized that I still wasn’t being careful. But the good thing is that I have noticed that and I will continue to try even harder on my teaching language in class. Other than the takeaways, one of the noticeable differences between the summer lesson plan and the fall lesson plan is that I added some questions that my students can talk about that are connected to their real lives. They can talk about their elementary school house and their middle school house. They can also talk about their classrooms they like or dislike and they get to talk about why. This way the students can apply to what we learned to real life situations. The students can benefit a lot if what they are learning can be used in real life settings compared to something they can hardly use in normal life conversations. That being said, because of this program, I started to focus more on creating a more authentic setting for my students. Other than providing authentic reading and listening materials, I also tried to create authentic scenarios for my students. The first thing I started was to create a speech bubble for them so the dialogues look more clear and authentic. Also, I tried to implement more cultural knowledge in my lessons so my students can be more engaged in the authentic setting. The second thing I did was to pay attention to the amount of time that my students are talking to each other in target language. Before, I never focused on that. There were times when my students were talking a lot and there were also times when I talked a lot. So now every class I try to create topics that my students can have a lot of opportunities to talk about in class using target language. All in all, I am very grateful for the times at UVA and grateful for all the teachers and the lessons I learned.

reflection 6

wenlixu426 — 2023-11-15 01:18:30 UTC

Throughout my time at Startalk I have gained a lot of knowledge about designing lessons plans and being more effective as a teacher of a foreign language. This knowledge and the new lesson plans have changed my philosophy in the classroom. I am much more intentional about what I do.

Most importantly, I have included communicative drills in my lesson plans and use real life materials and task based clues. This help students find more meaning in what they lean and increase their engagement. For me, it is a lot more interesting when I see the students so engaged and involved in the classroom activities.

I have also increased the use of web-based learning to enhance both listening, speaking and understanding. The best sites for thi type of learning are bookcreator and thinklink.

In one task-based learning activity the students in my classroom created videos where they introduced their ideal home in the target language. They were very engaged and seemed to enjoy learning.

While, I have always enjoyed being a teacher, the new methods that I am using makes it even more enjoyable for me and the students. I have incorporated much of what I have learned in my classroom and look forward to experimenting even further with the methods during foreign language education.

zihuiuri — 2023-11-15 02:04:47 UTC

Firstly, there has been a notable shift in my level of engagement with fellow teachers. I've become more proactive in sharing ideas and regularly discussing classroom experiences with my colleagues. This open dialogue has fostered not only a sense of camaraderie but also provided valuable insights into different teaching approaches. Moreover, I've taken the initiative to extend invitations to my colleagues to attend and observe my classes. Simultaneously, I've reciprocated by making an effort to drop in on their classes. This mutual exchange of observations has proven to be an enriching experience, allowing us to witness diverse teaching styles and strategies in action. It has become a two-way street of collaboration, where the interchange of ideas contributes to a more dynamic and supportive teaching community.

Second, I have actively pursued opportunities to explore and integrate online tools into my teaching practices. I am grateful for all teachers who shared their ideas on using technology tools during the summer. I have implemented some of them in my classroom, such as ClassDojo, Quizlet diagrams, Padlet, etc. These efforts are aimed not only at enhancing the learning experience for students but also at fostering a dynamic and future-ready educational environment.

Lastly, I am intentionally shifting my focus toward enhancing student output by introducing meaningful and contextually relevant tasks. Recognizing the importance of active language production for effective language acquisition, I am incorporating tasks that encourage students to apply their language skills in real-life scenarios. These tasks go beyond traditional exercises and aim to provide authentic language-use experiences, such as engaging in discussions about students' personal experiences, expressing opinions on relevant topics, and participating in collaborative projects.

Reflection 6 (11/15/2023)

yyang132 — 2023-11-15 23:33:44 UTC

In the fall of 2023, I implemented a unit that I designed with my team over the summer in the UVA StarTalk 2023 program. The unit title is “Artificial Intelligence”. I taught this unit in my on-site “AP Chinese Language and Culture” class. This class has a big group of 27 students. To complete the whole unit, I spent 15 classes in total, with each class 45 minutes. Within the 15 classes, I spent 3 classes on the pre-tasks: vocabulary, sentences, and infographic comprehension in AI. I also spent 3 classes for the final project “Deisng Our AI School”. The rest 9 classes were used to complete the different learning tasks as the whole team designed during the summer (the original 3 lessons were broken into 9 smaller lessons). One big change in the class implementation was that students used the technology tool Canva instead of Thinglink to design their AI schools, due to the unavailability of Thinglink in our high school. Because my students were not familiar with Canva, I invited one of our tech support teachers twice to my class to help students with technology issues. Below are my reflections on the class implementation:

It is well worth that an extra three lessons were added at the beginning to go over vocabulary, structures, and infographic comprehension in class. Those three lessons laid a solid foundation of words and structures for students to complete the subsequent learning tasks.
Teamwork was very important in the class implementation. The PPT design and the lesson plans developed in the summer already built a very solid foundation for successful class teaching. Later in the fall, recording the online demo, discussing with team members, getting feedback from mentors and peers, and observing other teachers’ teaching all helped me to enrich the original design and adjust it to meet my students’ needs.
Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) was tested to be successful in my onsite class. Students were interested in exploring different authentic materials and completing real-life tasks. They were highly engaged in creating Instagram posts, making WeChat video calls with peers, carrying a conversation with Chinese students, debating the pros and cons of AI, formulating school rules on using AI, and the most exciting part, designing their own AI schools. My requirement for designing the AI school was to include 8 AI technologies in their design. We have 13 design teams in total, and several teams designed more than 8 AI technologies because they enjoyed the design process.
I learned a lot of teaching strategies from the UVA StatTalk summer program, such as providing flooded comprehensible input, pushing students' output with probing questions, using speech bubbles to scaffold interpersonal speaking skills, and presenting authentic materials in different ways. I used all of those strategies in my onsite classes and observed the gradual transformation of my classroom from teacher-centered to student-centered.
Besides adding the three pre-task lessons and using Canva as the design tool, other changes I made to the original unit design included a) revising some task instructions to be more clear and specific, b) helping students to distinguish some vocabulary words such as “先进 and 高级“， ”接管 and 代替“，c) developed more worksheets to support the task completion.

In general, the unit implementation went well and I delivered the whole unit as I planned. Students achieved the learning objectives and enjoyed the classes. I am very grateful that the UVA StarTalk program provided me with this opportunity to learn new teaching and learning theories and practices, to work with my team in designing this fantastic unit, to pilot-testing the unit design in real classes, and to receive valuable feedback from my peer teachers and mentors. I appreciate for all the help, support, encouragement, and inspiration I got the past year. Attending the 2023 UVA StarTalk program is one of the most precious experiences in my life.

yyang132 — 2023-11-15 23:41:17 UTC

Reflection 6

yingsinchen — 2023-11-16 05:45:08 UTC

Takeaways:

Create a more student-centered classroom. I have developed a stronger awareness of how to encourage student-student interaction. I regularly reflect on my lesson design, considering the balance between students' output and my own speaking. Additionally, I pay attention to detail when crafting elicitation questions. I recognize the need to further learn how to effectively use authentic materials for task design across different proficiency levels and how to intricately structure coherent tasks. I also aim to enhance my ability to create more task-based instructions.
Stimulate higher-level thinking and activate active learning. I have learned to design activities with this aspect in mind. From my experience, students have consistently exceeded my expectations in their language use and creativity.
Gain inspiration from mentors and peers in various aspects. I have acquired techniques in designing task-based instructions, scaffolding strategies, problem-solving skills, communication skills, and fostering a positive mindset.

What worked well and what needs improvement in the fall online teaching?

Pre-task Quizlet features provided ample sentence input with pictures, ensuring students were well-prepared for the lesson.
Besides providing sentence structures, I encouraged students to formulate their own grammar structures using sample sentences to promote active learning.
Through meaningful, purposeful, and communicative tasks, students negotiated meaning in the target language, enjoying the learning process. They gained confidence in expressing their ideas creatively.

Areas for improvement:

Pay more attention to details on slides and double-check for any mistakes.
Ensure that the language input mirrors the structure provided to students on slides to avoid confusion.
Allow students more time to answer and repeat after me.
Provide more opportunities for students to communicate with each other.
Address technology issues proactively before online teaching.

Attending the UVA STARTALK program has inspired me in various ways, and I am grateful for the opportunity to learn alongside mentors and teachers in this program. Thank you all for the encouragement, support, and the memories we have built together.

yingsinchen — 2023-11-17 06:34:29 UTC

Reflection 6

linglingxie27 — 2023-11-19 21:28:03 UTC

The UVA Startalk program has been an unique and unforgettable experience during my professional development career. It not only gives an awakening call but also open my eyes to a wonderful teaching world.

There are three major takeaways for myself after the program. First, it inspires me and give me more ideas on designing three modes of communication tasks for instruction and integrated performance assessment. Second, I learned that the two key element for the effective instruction are student and student interaction and scaffolding. When we plan the the lesson, we need to consider the three Ps(present, practice and produce) to give students the scaffolding to produce the output of the language. During the class time, I need to be alert on my speaking time and provide more time and opportunity to practice and produce the language. In the future, I will keep practice these two element and make my class more engaged and effective. Third, the importance of the team work and fun of designing the lesson with the colleagues together. I am very lucky to be in a group of the wonderful teachers who are excellent and dedicating to teaching. I learned a lot and got inspired from the colleagues such as Zeng Laoshi, Da Laoshi and all other teachers.

The things I did well in the Fall teaching is my lesson plan is creatve and has a good flow. Thanks for all my colleagues in the advanced group. We worked collaboratively and effectively to design three creative and great lesssons with the wonderful slides and worksheet. I can easily adopted to teach to my students. Another thing I did well is I gave a huge input flood and provide the speech bubbble so the students can produce the language as I expected.

The things I didn’t do well is my lesson is more teacher center and lack of student and student interaction. Because the students didn’t complete the preview tasks, I had to give the instruction and do it with them. I talked too much and didn’t leave the time for the students to speak. Also, I didn’t give enough wait time for the students to think and for myself to check for understanding. Online teaching is different from the class teaching. It also requires teacher to know the zoom and technology very well. I was not that familiar with the zoom which made me nervous during the instruction.

For the last few months, I opened my eyes to see how task-based instruction improve class instruction and students' proficiency. In the future, I will use the pedagogy for my IPA design and lesson plan and keep practicing to become a better Chinese teacher.

Photo

linglingxie27 — 2023-11-19 21:28:38 UTC

Post-Program Reminiscences

2023-11-21 17:10:31 UTC

Through this Startalk project, I learned how to use task-based teaching in my classroom to effectively improve students' learning efficiency. At the same time, by cooperating with my fellow teachers, I feel more confident and efficient in preparing lesson plans. The most important thing about my transition from a new teacher to a master teacher is the transition from teacher-fronted class to student-centered class. I will try my best to implement this strategy in my future teaching.

2023-11-21 17:12:24 UTC

Post-Program Reminiscences

yingsinchen — 2023-11-22 18:36:18 UTC

In this inspirational program, I learned effective practices to create a more “student-centered” class with authentic materials and communicative tasks. I learned techniques for selecting authentic materials and designing spiral-up tasks tailored to different proficiency levels.

Learning from mentors and peers about the effective use of technology tools to support teaching and spark student motivation has been rewarding.

I have gained insights into scaffolding learning step by step in a logical way, enhancing my awareness of how to design lessons and formulate effective elicitation questions.

The examination of teaching demos, engaging in peer-teaching, and participating in peer critiques has enabled me to closely examine and reflect on my own lesson design and scaffolding strategies for student learning.

Over two weeks spent collaborating on projects with peers, sharing ideas, and having fun, I've not only learned to be more confident in communicating ideas but also gained valuable firsthand teaching experiences from my peers.

I feel recharged with good food for thoughts from all mentors and peers, and I am motivated to continuously improve my teaching practices for the benefit of my students. I strongly recommend this program to all teachers seeking professional development opportunities.

Xinjia Xia's post-program reminiscences

2023-11-23 05:14:36 UTC

Participating in UVA's STARTalk program has been a significant journey for me. During this journey, I not only delved deep into the Task-based teaching strategy and learned how to provide better support to my students, but I also had the incredible opportunity to connect with a group of like-minded friends. Together, we've discovered the power of maintaining a positive outlook when facing challenges, actively seeking solutions, and firmly believe that as educators, our dedication can significantly enhance our students' learning and emotional development.

zihuiuri — 2023-11-23 13:56:00 UTC

Lingling's post-program reminiscences

linglingxie27 — 2023-11-26 20:43:17 UTC

Participating in the UVA Startalk teacher program this summer was an enriching experience that significantly enhanced my teaching approach. The focus on task-based instruction was particularly enlightening, providing practical strategies to engage students actively in the learning process. Implementing effective teaching instructions such as student-student interaction and the three P's not only streamlined lesson plans but also fostered a more interactive and dynamic classroom environment.

Equally valuable was the friendship built with fellow Chinese teachers during the program. Sharing insights, resources, and experiences created a supportive network that continues to inspire my teaching approach.The program not only honed my teaching skills but also created a network of like-minded educators. Reflecting on these memories, I am grateful for the knowledge gained, the bonds formed, and the positive impact it has had on my teaching journey.

Post-program Reminiscences

yyang132 — 2023-12-11 04:33:35 UTC

I am very grateful that the UVA StarTalk 2023 program provided me with this opportunity to learn new teaching and learning principles and practices, to work with my team in designing this fantastic AI unit, to pilot-test the unit design in real classes with my students, to receive valuable feedback from my peer teachers and mentors, and to revise the unit design to fit my local needs better. This cycle of design-implmentation-evaluation-revision will continue in my future teaching practices. I appreciate all the help, support, encouragement, and inspiration I got over the past year. Attending the 2023 UVA StarTalk program is one of the most precious experiences in my life.

Post-program reminiscences

milk930613 — 2023-12-17 18:15:13 UTC

This is my second time participating in the UVA STARTALK Chinese Teacher Academy program. It is truly an amazing program for Chinese teachers in the United States. I am grateful for the opportunity to be a part of this program and to work and connect with the best Chinese teachers across the country. We collaborate closely to address real classroom challenges and create lessons that can be implemented in our own classrooms.

The program has also allowed me to reflect on my teaching practices and reconsider concepts such as "authenticity," "task-based language teaching," "teaching with technology," and "student-centered class." Professor Tseng and all the mentor teachers have provided valuable guidance in this process. This has been an impressive and wonderful learning experience for me, and I highly recommend this program to all Chinese teachers in the United States.

Post-Program Reminscences

yhuang1 — 2023-12-18 21:32:21 UTC

In the past few months, in spite of the busy schedules with school work and family life, I have been greatly benefited from attending the UVA Startalk Program in the summer that has provided me with ongoing reflection in my daily teaching. It has totally reshaped my philosophy of teaching from what I thought was good for students to what students would benefit the most from a backward design curriculum that first identifies the desired outcomes and then crafted lessons and assessments to meet those objectives. It certainly ensures a coherent and purposeful learning journey for the students.

The incorporation of project based tasks with authentic materials does allow students to apply their language skills in real-world scenarios, which not only make learning more engaging but also encourage a deeper understanding of the language. The most impact on my teaching is to focus on more student-centered learning, in which students do more (you do) rather than teachers lead students mainly for practice (I do, we do). In order to allow students to do more, scaffolding is a critical element of effective instruction. Besides, the authentic materials play a crucial role in creating an immersive learning environment. I have utilized authentic videos from edpuzzle to allow students to engage with the language in the real-world context, thereby enhancing their comprehension and cultural understanding.

Most importantly, the mentorship and peer teaching aspects from the UVA Startalk program were invaluable, which allowed me to feel supported and inclusive in team work. Having an experienced mentor and peer teaching in a group not only fosters collaboration but also allows for diverse perspectives and constructive feedback, which I truly cherished the most during the 2-week intensive training. I was feeling so much insufficient in the ability of teaching, compared to those expert teachers in my group. However, I have learned so much from them, which enabled me and enriched me to have a better teaching approach for my students.

yhuang1 — 2023-12-18 21:39:07 UTC

Post-program Reminiscence:

2023-12-28 23:19:44 UTC

One paragraph can hardly express my gratitude and to cover what I learned from UVA Startalk program. Even though I might not be able to use everything I learned from the program about task-based learning, the core principle of task based learning is deeply embedded in my classroom. I tried to create authentic environment for my students so they can learn through real-life situations which is very inviting for the language learners. Also another insight I had was that as teachers we should limit the amount of talking we have in class and try to provide more opportunities for the students to express themselves . This is a common mistake we tend to make as teachers since we are always trying to provide as many instructions as we can so the students don’t make any mistakes. However, as much as we want to provide more input we should still focus on the target language output. These are the two most important insights after I went back to my classroom.

Post-Program reflection

wenlixu426 — 2024-01-03 01:12:30 UTC

I am so fortunate to have gone through the Startalk program. Since the pre-program started almost a year ago and having completed both the main program and post program, I have learned alot about teaching chinese. The techniques I learned for online teaching are transeferable to the classroom. I have learned to structure my classroom preparation and use the 7 principles to produce better learning outcomes in my students.

I am very thankful for the people who provided for this opportunity and taught me throughout this last year. I have learned so much and gained lasting professional contacts that I will use in years to come.

I hope this program will be available for many more tachers to expand online chinese learning effectiveness.

Thank you very much.

wenlixu426 — 2024-01-03 01:13:06 UTC

kongfanrong0628 — 2024-01-04 19:53:25 UTC

Post-program reminiscences

2024-01-08 15:26:50 UTC

Reflecting on the Startalk program at the University of Virginia’s Chinese Teacher Academy has been an enriching experience. Under the guidance of Dr. Tseng, I had the privilege of delving into the intricacies of language teaching. Dr. Tseng’s expertise and support were invaluable as I learned to craft lessons within authentic settings, employing strategies like 小讲, 小练, 小用, and 大用 to establish a robust scaffolding for students to receive comprehensible input.

The program not only honed my teaching skills but also fostered personal growth, enhancing my leadership abilities. Interacting with Dr. Tseng and the accomplished Chinese teachers in the program provided a unique opportunity to exchange insights and experiences, creating a vibrant community of educators. Grateful for the knowledge gained and the connections made, the Startalk program at the University of Virginia has left an indelible mark on my journey as a Chinese language instructor.