Talk on Teaching English Listening Skills in Taipei

This afternoon from 2 to 4:20pm, at National Taipei University of Technology, along with Annie (詹麗馨老師), I shared with around 200 English teachers in Taipei some tips for teaching English listening skills. This was not the first time we completed a mission together, but it was the first time we two gave a talk together to a big audience. On March 9 and 16, I went alone to Kaohsiung and Taichung to have an exchange of ideas on the same topic.

I started to prepare for this talk around Feb. 10. First I read related books, articles in magazines or online, and took notes based on the outline given by CET, the publisher Annie and I wrote a listening book for. Then Annie and I exchanged our notes. It took us around two weeks. Then, with the solid foundation of what we read, I started to make the ppt and emailed the 1st draft of our ppt to Shawn at CET. In the process, our mutual friend Sarah (殷彩鳳老師) contributed through LINE quite a few suggestions about how to present the speech . It was during our LINE discussion that I decided to give the audience a simplified ppt handout instead of a complete version so as to save paper and at the same time not to let the cat out of the bag. However, to keep the audience from being too busy taking notes, following Sarah's advice, I made the other handout to give after the talk, on which was more detailed information. Before submitting the ppt and handout, I discussed with Annie the ppt slide by slide.

Before giving the talk on March 9 in Kaohsiung, I kept revising the complete version of the ppt. I talked in Kaohsiung with my 8th version of ppt. After that, I modified the simplified ppt and the handout, and sent to Shawn the new versions on March 11, with the revision work of the complete ppt going on. On March 16,  in Taichung, I presented the speech with the 15th version!

Today, with the 20th version of the ppt, Annie and I completed our task. I am responsible for the first 3 sections, and Annie the remaining 2. Near the end of the talk, when Annie asked the audience about the version of the ppt we showed today, the teachers started their guess with "the 5th." The moment Annie announced it was the 20th, the audience gave us big applause. Whether they really learned something new from our talk, at least, they saw our passion, our hard work, and our insistance on giving our best shot.









Getting prepared.





With the CET staff.



Before the talk

 











Teachers doing TPR. Lovely!





Taken with two teachers during the break.



The teachers listened to Annie attentively.

 





Right after the talk, before the audience left.







With some attendees.

 



With Stacy.



With Karen.



With Shawn.



We are good partners.