Episode Details

1113 如何增进自己的英文写作能力？

1. 开始每天写英语日记。

2. 阅读大量英语的书籍和文章，你喜欢的主题，并且里面不会有超过20%你不懂的东西。

3. 交往一些外国的笔友。

4. 写完之后，找专业的老师或是英语为母语的朋友给你批改纠正下。

An idea that helps my students learn in an interesting way

I have always had English speaking friends, however, most of my Chinese students don’t have such luck. About 10 years ago, I was a language instructor for the employees at EA games and got to know Anthony, a Korean American and the game producer who just relocated from the U.S. Anthony was really outgoing and friendly, and loved making friends. We hit it off in the first class. Although we were teacher and student, we usually went for a drink and chatted for hours after work. I also enjoyed showing him around Shanghai. One time he recommended me saying that I was  probably the coolest mandarin teacher in China. That touched me a lot.

He told me back home he really enjoyed CouchSurfing, which is to stay overnight on a friend's (or even a stranger's) couch. That was the first time I heard about such a way to travel and live! My horizon widened a bit more every time I spoke to him. I also wanted my students to have this kind of magical experience because language learning could be so much fun when you’re learning from different cultures. It was a shame that Anthony only had some opportunities to practice a few sentences of Mandarin in my class. So an idea came to my mind; I made my students teach him Mandarin after class. They would go to a cafe and had a mission to speak to Anthony about one topic in Mandarin for about 30 minutes. That activity helped my students use what they knew in English to express themselves, and Anthony got to learn a few more new sentences in Mandarin as well as experience speaking to different people locally.

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