Sightseeing in Washington

We spent two days touring in Washington. Many sights passed just like a night of wonder except the monument of Vietnem war and the nati0nal Museum of Natural History. When walking down the wall-like monument inscribed with names of numerous soldiers who died or were missing in that cruel war, I can't helping reflecting on the history and meaning of life. Nobody would like to die in vain in the name of such abstract words as glory or bravery, be he or she a Chinese or American. All we long for and cherish is long-term peace and brotherhood in the whole world. That's also what the architect wanted to let us understand when we watch the reflection of our images in the mirror-like stone.
Now forget about the heavey history. Let me show you something amusing in the National Museum of Natural History. You just can't believe it: you may find your own ancestor who lived between 200,000 and 28,000 years ago. All you need do is just take a picture of your own with the computer and input the necessary information about yourself . Then you will be transformed into a Homo neanderthalensis, one of the closest relatives of modern humans. To be frank, very few of us feel satisfied with our apperance in the photo, because we all have a big nose and hairy head, which make us look like a stupid pig or monster. Oh, there is one exception. Lilian should be voted "the No 1 beauty in the pre-history period" thanks to her big shining eyes.
Tomorrow we are heading for New York. Hope we can experience more exciting stories.

Farewell, Penn State

The best thing about leaving is going home. Tomorrow we are leaving here, but I have a mixed feeling of joy and meloncholy. Penn State is like my second home. I feel very attached to everything on campus: the squirrels, rabbits, bell, church, Old Main, library, grass, trees, Museum, nice people, dedicated teachers. It's really hard for me to say bye-bye. I still remember the first day we arrived. We took pictures everywhere in the early morning. Tomorrow I am going to get up early again, not for shooting pictures, but for kissing every trace of good memory. There is a voice echoing in my heart: Farewell, Penn State. You'll always remain a pure land when i want to retire from the madding crowd in Beijing.
I love you, Penn State, Forever!

comments about learning/teaching culture through art, values expressed through art, and upon seeing the Palmer Art Museum

The tour in the Palmer Art Museum is a journey into the American history and culture. The artists captured the life, happiness, suffering, love, beauty, ideal, politics and sports in their unique perspectives and with their unconventional forms. To understand these, we have to use our rich imagination and new insight to observe what we have neglected or taken for granted so long. When figuring out the true meaning beyond the painting, I came to understand that art is so close to us and anybody can find the connection between real life and art. What you need do is just to use your mental eye to find the beauty and interpret it with words, painting, dancing or sculpture. If we, the English teachers are able to connect art with language and culture teaching and cultivate students potential in appreciating and creating art within the sociolinguistic context , isn't that the ideal outcome of SLA?
I once tried the method of comparing the Chinese and Western paintings in my intercultural communication class and let students find the values beyond that. They were as highly motivated as us in Michell's class. They even extended this comparison to Chinese and American writing and found the different values embodied in painting also exist in writing patterns. Isn't this discovery wonderful and creative? So I always reflect upon the true aim of education. Besides the necessary social skill, common sense, expertise and morality, shouldn't we integrate art as a compulsory part? After all, the participatory and creative feature of education can find its best expression in art, which in turn, may build students' self-esteem, encourage them to take new adventures and get the most from both life and study.

My thoughts about using wiki in my class

In the previous post, I talked about the use of blog in teaching intercultural communication. After today's class, i find wiki is much more open and flexible to finish task-based cultural projects because it provides a web-based environement for collaborative work. Content is ego-less, timeless and never finished. Anyone can change anthing. But that's also the problem. If a student makes great effort to search for information and presents his or her ideas in a neat form, what might he or she feel if someone just removes it with the click of the mouse? Frustrated and unacceptable! It's true that the administrater will monitor those posts and keep the good ones. But undountedly every student really think highly of his or her own creative ideas, which, hopefully might engage the interests of the others. So maybe it's better to combine the blog and wiki in cultural projects. For personal exchange and indiviudal assignment, the Ss may do them on blogs, which is an ideal platform to show individual opinions and carry out in-depth and systematic research . For group tasks and collabrative work , the Ss may choose wiki to share different opinions and do peer edition. Another key issue is how the teacher assesses Ss'use of blog and wiki. The updating speed, the content, the layout of the page,peer feedback, the list of reference, visual interest should be taken into consideration for the assessment of blog. And for wiki, besides the above-mentioned, the peer comments on the students' participation in the project should be considered as a very important assessing criterion. Anyway, any benefit from the use of technology does not lie in the means itself but in both linguistic and cultural competence, and hopefully, a healthy multicultural character.

Ideas about how to use chatting in my class

I think it's better to have students do in-class chatting at first for some time, because some of them may lack computer literacy or some of them, esp, in China lack the ability to study independently. The teacher should help them overcome these difficulties.
Take college English for example, in elementary class we may assign some simple task, such as the use of tense, guessing the name of some celebrities, or self-introduction (one student in a pair is required to guess who the other person making self-introduction is )to them. For intermediate class, we may require them to slove some problems, say the NASA game. While explaining what items to choose and persuading each other, the students actually are engaging in very meaninggul negotiation, practical writing or maybe, critical thinking. For advanced learners, they may be required to do some cultural project. For example, students may be required to surey on college students' view on employment. They can engage in team work. First, they should search some infomation and write up a survey they will conduct through negotiation on line. Second they should respectively interview a couple of female, male, Chinese and Western college students via on-line chatting. And then they should study these statistics or cases very carefully and find the gender and cultural differences in the view on employment. Finally, each of them is supposed to post their findings or analysis of the reasons on their blog. Again through synchronous and asynchronous on-line chatting, they will reflect on and recorrect their respective views. Hopefully their individual report will be incorporated into a final paper, which will be published in some influential education magazines or college newspaper.
This way they will surely be crazy about this kind of autonomou study and have a strong motivation to carry it on. Of course, during the process, the teacher should offer some help with technology and intercultural communication .

Reaction towards chatting on-line

This kind of chatting is not novel to young people. But using it as a teaching or self-teachig method is really new to me. When chatting with different students or people, i do think we can learn about them in a more subtle and personal way. We will have our students trust us and confide to us just like friends. Many teachers complain it's really hard to conduct a large class. Actually, this kind of chatting is a good supplement to in-class teaching. The key issues are how to adapt it to different teaching objectives and courses and how to motivate students.