What did you learn from designing the CALL lessons?
How did the design of the CALL lessons enrich your professional knowledge?

      Choosing a career has always been on my mind ever since I started university. So it’s not too much to say that, for me, it’s truly an inspiring experience to have an internship at a local junior high school.

      For almost all my life (since elementary school), I’ve been raised in a bilingual environment, and the ability to speak and understand English has become, almost, a second nature to me, so it’s quite a shock when I first met those kids.

      They are of grade seven, in class 704 in MinXiong Junior High School. Perhaps due to their lack of resources or motivation, their English speaking skills are almost non-existent. I didn’t realize it at the time. I thought they just don’t care about the tests. So the moment I finished grading their first GEPT test, I became quite anxious and a bit paranoid. The first thoughts that came to my mind are: “How am I supposed to teach them anything if they don’t even care to try?” and “Surely they can’t be THAT bad? Did they even try?”. After I finished grading all their tests, however, I came to realize how “depraved” their English abilities are, and how much they needed help and motivation. So during the sessions, I talked to them mostly in Chinese and tried my best to be patient with them, although it’s really hard to do so because almost none of them talked. Despite this, they are actually good kids.

      In class one, everything went relatively well. We did an ice breaking activity called “hot potato”. In this activity, we sit in a circle and pass a paper ball around while the music plays in the background. When the music stops, whoever’s holding the ball gets to introduce themselves using the template I gave them. This went relatively well, and they seemed to like it. The lesson in this class is by far the easiest of all four classes. They catch on easily, and gave me time to get them to use Pagamo. There had been quite a few technical issues with Pagamo, mainly due to the students being unfamiliar with how computers work. I also used Wordwall in this class, but ended up absolutely hating it due to how janky it is and how ineffective it is for my class.

       After class one, though, that’s when things get interesting. Simply said, my materials are too hard for them. The worst happened in class two, when two of my five students fell asleep right in front of me and I didn’t know what to do. Not all that happened in this class are bad though. I introduced them to Kahoot, which they liked, probably because whoever got the highest score gets something to eat, but I digress. After the class, I did some thinking again and came to the conclusion of them falling asleep not just because I’m too boring in class, but because midterm is around the corner. I realized that I tend to take things too personally.

      Class three and four are similar, just reviews and clarifications for class two, since the materials are way too hard for them to absorb at once. I used powerpoint for all the lessons, and there’s always been a concurrent flaw in my designs: I should’ve put in more pictures and less words while making the sentences simpler.

      I did not use ChatGPT for lesson planning because I totally forgot it existed, although I wholeheartedly support the usage of it as long as it serves as the ASSISTANT to the person, but I digress. For the duration of this internship, it’s interesting to develop a lesson around technology, which is something that’s rarely done in the cram school I worked in (also Chinese classes I’ve had when I was young). Although the tools I used were not great for developing speaking skills, one of them, scre.io, is the most promising, as long as the class is willing to speak. I learned to think on my feet and adapt to changing plans. Also, I learned that clarity in the instructions are important, no matter how simple I think something is, when explaining to someone for the first time, I should probably say everything even if it’s obvious to me.