Li-chuan's visit to my class, plus reflection on being a language teacher

Li-chuan came to observe my class this afternoon. I was teaching Lungteng 510 to Class 314. My procedure is as follows:

I. Greeting the students.

II. Asking them to tell me the title of this lesson. (I Have a Dream)

III. Asking them about their dream.

(I got many responses.)

IV. Asking them about their dream world.

(They'd like to live in a world where everybody enjoys good health, is happy, rich, where love is found and where there is no racial discrimination....)

V. Having them look at the picture in the book and ask them who was that, what they know about him. (Since they have learned about Martin Luther King, they could tell me something about him. Better than I had expected.)

VI. Having the students read the 1st paragraph silently to find the main idea. (Students' answer: the background of the famous speech. Terrific!)

VII. Asking them about some details. (Very good participation)

VIII. Going through the 1st paragraph sentence by sentence, explaining some difficult parts, pointing out some important phrases or words, posing some questions for students to think about, such as why Dr. King chose to speak at Lincoln Memorial.

IX. Having students to form pairs and read aloud the text to each other by turns.

X. Having students repeat the new words after me.

XI. Inviting students to watch the video of the speech.

Reflection:

There is so much to deal with in this lesson. If we don't talk about how unjustly the black people were treated in Dr. King's time, students can't empathize with them, which in turn might keep them from being convinced by the speech. So being an English teacher, I have to review history. Language teachers have to know something about everything, depending on the subject of an article. That's challeging!