I realized that we mainly report on our adventures, perhaps giving the impression that we spend our weeks exploring and taking it easy. I have to clarify that that's not true at all. Normally, during the weekdays, Paul spends his days at his office (which he shares with a very silent--almost invisible--history professor), working on various projects including this book on modality. He meets with two colleagues regularly. As for me, I watch Benjamin about two days of the week, and when my Mom comes to watch him, I go off to work on a paper, or teach on Wed. and Thursday mornings. We meet at Noah's school altogether at around 5pm-ish and the boys go crazy and dirty on the playgrounds for about half an hour. Then comes the best part of the day: okay, where shall we eat tonight?
As for my teaching... Hmm, my initial positive impression of the respectful and obedient students remained true, but I am getting increasingly frustrated at their lack of responses or any opinion at all. This is especially true with the science/engineering majors. I simply cannot get a word out of them! Do you think I look scary? I don't think so, but even when I call on them, there's often a dead silence with the student looking down at his book. Some of them cannot even form a question. I don't think it's a matter of English ability, as they obviously excelled in English to be in this advanced class. So this is the biggest challenge so far--try to open them up and help think do some thinking.
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7 comments:
Hi Syliva,
This is interesting! Hmmmm...Being from a science background I may be able to help...What types of questions do you ask? I don't remember exactly which subject you are teaching. Are you teaching English or Linguistics? Are these students very top? Antoher words, is it hard to get into the university and the field they got in?
Tara
Let's see, being in a public school where more the half the population is Asian, maybe I can give my two cents, too.
Since I am usually a TA and only lead discussions, I usually give a pep talk to my students (18 year-old Californians) at the beginning of class about the importance of asking questions. I tell them that it is the natural way of things that the more they learn, the more questions they will have, so that if they aren't asking any questions, I would be worried about them. If that doesn't work, I ask them to prepare a discussion question based on the reading and email it to me before class. Then I at least know what, if anything at all, they are thinking about, and can pick the best/most probelmatic ones to use for discussion.
Great ideas. I will try the one Ashin suggested--make them write down a question before class.
Yes, the students are very successful/top on tests. The university is one of the best in the country, and these students ranked top 10% on their English proficiency test. I ask questions ranging from "what's the main point of this article?" to "Do you agree with X on Y?" Zero response, usually. But I talked to some other profs and it seems very common among Taiwanese new college students, so I am the one needing to adjust, not them!
I also like Lucia's suggestion.
It seems like this is just a cultural thing... Maybe they view answering questions as arguing with their teacher and they are worried about saying something that you don't agree with...may be they are just trying to be polite. So, why don't you bring it up this issue in class and see what they say..in a friendly way talk about how students react in different settings that you have taught before. Tell them about the conversation between all of us and tell them that since they are so top and smart, you know they have good ideas. If you bring it up that way, they may start feeling more relaxed and start communicating.
tara
Hi Sylvia,
I like Tara's and Ashin's (Lucia's?)suggestions.
I remember one simple thing that worked surprisingly well for me when I taught in China. I had a class with a discussion period(which is obviously really uncomfortable when folks aren't talking). I made a rule that two people had to talk between every time I talked. There was lots of silence at first, but eventually this got them focusing on what their classmates were saying. Soon I couldn't get a word in. And during regular class the students would speak up a whole lot more.
Hi Sylvia,
I'm quite familiar with Chinese students' classroom behaviors at top universities, so I guess your students may have similar patterns. One thing you could try in addtion to the above suggestions is to divide the class into small groups for discussion. Ask them to choose a speaker to report their discussion. You can move onto group interaction as well... Many students may not want to stand out to talk to you individually in the class but in general they are comfortable with talking or even arguing with each other. Also, when they feel they are speaking for a group (even after an argument inside the group), they feel more oblidged to talk :-).
Thanks to Diana's (it's you right?) suggestion of making rule of talking. I will also try to take about this issue explicitly to my class. Ginny, I tried group discussions, but they were still so quiet within a group. Perhaps I should divide them up into 2-person dyads. I have 32 students so I can see it can be intimidating to speak up. I will try everything and let you know how it goes. It'll be interesting when the time comes for individual oral presentations. Most of the students can't even project their voice loud enough to be heard by all. It'll be a huge challenge for them to come up and speak!
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