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US schools teach love of learning and reading
By Zong Lei |
February 28, 2012, Tuesday
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MY son is attending Grade One at an international school in New York. It's fascinating to compare the teaching of English at his school with how we learn Chinese in China.
My son's language homework is mostly reading. The school offers no English textbook. Every week, the teacher assigns two picture books for reading and re-reading. These books are of great varieties: fantasies, adventures, science and so on.
Parents are asked to facilitate discussions, which guide students to connect the books with their experiences, with other books they have read and with the real world. Students are thus helped to better understand the books and encouraged to express their views.
There are also projects for homework, which require research.
For example, for the project of animal study, each child chose one animal. They borrowed books from the school library. They were helped to search websites for relevant information and consolidate it.
At the end of this five-week project, each student made a presentation about the animal with a self-made model of the animal's habitat.
Obviously, such projects capture children's interest and curiosity and drive them to read broadly. At the same time, skills such as reading comprehension, summarizing, public speaking and creativity are all exercised.
Language learning is further supported by a resource-rich school library. A weekly library class introduces kids to all kinds of books. Informative librarians always recommend a whole range of books based on the child's interest. The library opens early and closes late so that students can visit it either before or after school. Visiting libraries and reading books are cultivated as habits.
In comparison, Chinese language teaching in China does not nurture the love of reading and independent thinking. This, in my view, is caused by two major problems.
Rote learning
Firstly, teaching of textbooks seems to be the ultimate purpose of language classes. This is made worse by the selection of content, which often serves the purposes of moral education.
Teaching virtues is necessary , but it should not be the main responsibility of language classes and should not be the standard for text selection. Textbooks should, first of all, present the beauty of the Chinese language and inspire students to read more extensively.
Secondly, rote learning, exercises and tests dominate the learning process. Independent thinking is significantly curbed by memorizing, doing exercises and taking tests with standard answers. Besides, the repetition of similar exercises in large quantities easily kills students interest. Worse, it swallows up large amounts of their time, which could have been used to read what interests them.
I am aware that Chinese and English are two very different languages, which may require very different teaching methods. However, I think that language classes should introduce the enjoyment of reading and cultivate enthusiastic readers and that they should offer wonderful opportunities for young students to practice independent thinking.
The author is a freelancer based in New York.
My son's language homework is mostly reading. The school offers no English textbook. Every week, the teacher assigns two picture books for reading and re-reading. These books are of great varieties: fantasies, adventures, science and so on.
Parents are asked to facilitate discussions, which guide students to connect the books with their experiences, with other books they have read and with the real world. Students are thus helped to better understand the books and encouraged to express their views.
There are also projects for homework, which require research.
For example, for the project of animal study, each child chose one animal. They borrowed books from the school library. They were helped to search websites for relevant information and consolidate it.
At the end of this five-week project, each student made a presentation about the animal with a self-made model of the animal's habitat.
Obviously, such projects capture children's interest and curiosity and drive them to read broadly. At the same time, skills such as reading comprehension, summarizing, public speaking and creativity are all exercised.
Language learning is further supported by a resource-rich school library. A weekly library class introduces kids to all kinds of books. Informative librarians always recommend a whole range of books based on the child's interest. The library opens early and closes late so that students can visit it either before or after school. Visiting libraries and reading books are cultivated as habits.
In comparison, Chinese language teaching in China does not nurture the love of reading and independent thinking. This, in my view, is caused by two major problems.
Rote learning
Firstly, teaching of textbooks seems to be the ultimate purpose of language classes. This is made worse by the selection of content, which often serves the purposes of moral education.
Teaching virtues is necessary , but it should not be the main responsibility of language classes and should not be the standard for text selection. Textbooks should, first of all, present the beauty of the Chinese language and inspire students to read more extensively.
Secondly, rote learning, exercises and tests dominate the learning process. Independent thinking is significantly curbed by memorizing, doing exercises and taking tests with standard answers. Besides, the repetition of similar exercises in large quantities easily kills students interest. Worse, it swallows up large amounts of their time, which could have been used to read what interests them.
I am aware that Chinese and English are two very different languages, which may require very different teaching methods. However, I think that language classes should introduce the enjoyment of reading and cultivate enthusiastic readers and that they should offer wonderful opportunities for young students to practice independent thinking.
The author is a freelancer based in New York.
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