Process vs. Product

Over the lunch, my colleague and I talked about our postgraduate studies. One thing different is that he has finished his PhD for a few years and I am still pursuing my studies. I always joked with him that he could enjoy his life now as he completed the biggest project in life. He said it was not the case. Upon graduation, he felt desperate and was at a loss for almost a year. He expressed that to look back, he did enjoy the time when he was studying his PhD. I totally agreed with him. Though I am overloaded as well as overwhelmed with both my studies and teaching, I do enjoy every minute being a doctoral student as I have learnt something new every day. I can witness my intellectual 'growth' over time and it is good for me and my students in the long run.

Paris

When you look at the topic of this entry, you may think I will talk about Paris in France. You're wrong! Paris is one of my favourite lecturers when I was an undergraduate student. He inspired me to fall in love with literature. In the past, I did not like poetry and fictions as I was a science student. Since I took Paris's courses on English poetry and modern and post-modern literature, I became so obsessed with Blake's poems and modern American novels. During my last year of study in the university, he taught us the comparative literature. At that time, I found it very difficult to compare the literature of two different cultures, but it's fun! To look back, I thought he was an enthusiastic and caring university teacher. We haven't seen each other for almost 10 years. Few months ago, I got to know that he is teaching at PolyU. I said I would visit him for two months. Perhaps, in the summer, I will contact him again, he is a very nice guy and also very talented. Apart from English literature, he is also a great violinist!

Paris, thanks for your teaching and you enlightened me to be a good teacher!

Souvenir

One of my ex-colleagues, Amy will retire very soon. She is a good friend of mine and my wife when we were with her in school. Those good old days are gone as three of us have no longer worked in the same place. Amy will enjoy her laid-back lifestyle after retirement. I work as a teacher educator and my wife works as an school administrator at one NGO in Hong Kong.

On the coming Monday, some of my ex-colleagues will organize a farewell dinner for Amy. I have bought an eye-catching watch for her as a souvenir and wish her all the best after retirement. To be honest, Amy is a very versatile person who is so knowledgable as she teaches science and has many interests. I reckon she will travel a lot and stay with her nieces and nephews in the future. Amy, we are friends forever!

Blogging

This Saturday, I started teaching another cohort of NSS in Town Centre. In the second session, when I talked about the school-based curriculum planning, I mentioned four strategies to plan our curriculum effectively, one of which was about how to integrate classroom learning and independent learning. I used blogging as an example. First, I showed the participants one practical paper on how to set up a class blog. Second, I showed my own blog to them and highlight two blogs of one eight-year-old and one nine-year-old. I thought they were impressed since blogging can actually motivate all walks of life to write, especially, in English. I also mentioned a few advantages of blogging:

1. Students have a sense of belonging and a sense of achievement as they can witness their work gets published.

2. Students tend to be more serious and conscious in their writing if they know the teacher is not the only person who reads their written work.

3. Blogging can create a learning community in which both students and teachers can respond to each other writing such as posting comments.

4. As blogging has no rigid timeframe, it can be flexibly used inside and outside classroom. Blogging can be a powerful tool for self-access work which is also one of the features in New Senior Curriculum.

Given that there are so many advantages of blogging, you may want to set up a class blog and start communicating with your students electronically! Why not?

Composition Slaves

Yesterday, though the weather was terrible (rainstorm signal and typhoon signal no. 3 were hoisted), I still attended the seminar held in Chinese University about marking students' compositions. Why did I go? In the first place, this talk was given by one of my scholastic idols, Prof. Icy Lee who is an international second writing expert. Second, I want to know how I can help my students who are mainly local teachers to revolutionize their marking practices. Third, through listening to some sharing given by the frontline teachers, I can understand more how teachers do their marking in secondary classrooms.

The summary of the talk is that teachers spent far too much time on marking which is neither productive nor beneficial to students' learning. The other point is that a handful of teachers want to try out some alternative methods on marking, but due to their seniority, they were not allowed to do so and oftentimes, they had to stick to the marking policy stipulated by their panel heads.

Towards the end of this seminar, Prof. Icy Lee mentioned few good ideas on effective marking which I totally agreed. First, we should attempt focused marking, highlighting those common errors and priotizing them in different marking. Students are unable to 'notice' or correct all their errors if we mark their compositions comprehensively. Second, she suggested that having conferences with students, even just very short ones, would be beneficial to students' understanding of their errors and of how they could take appropriate actions to revise their compositions. Of course, there is still long way to go to have a real battle to revolutionize teaching marking practices, but no doubt, Prof. Icy Lee could give us some insightful directions to plan ahead what we should do in the next five years.

Supervisors

Half a year ago, I got to know that my thesis supervisor will retire very soon. It means that I will have a new supervisor. At that time, my feeling was mixed. If you survey all doctoral students, nobody will tell you that they want to change supervisor unless something wrong happens between the tutors and tutees.

To be honest, I respect my current supervisor very much as we have known each other for more than ten years. We met each other when I took his PGDE class. Since then, he became supervisor of my master thesis and doctoral thesis. He taught me a lot of modules over these ten years' time such as written discourse, teaching of reading and writing and research methodologies. He always gave me a lot of inspiring ideas on teaching and research. Though he looks very cool and scholastic, I reckon he is a warm and good-hearted gentleman deep inside him. I think I am going to miss him. I remember he gave me a lot of support when I was struggling in the first year of my doctoral study. I was in and out hospital for a few times and changed jobs during my first year of study but he gave me a lot of support and helped me go through my most 'critical' time.

As for my new supervisor, he is a friend of mine. Initially and even now, I treat him like my idol. We met each other almost four years ago. Since I like his teaching approach very much, I was enrolled in the five courses he taught and of course, I learnt a great deal from him. As time goes by, he treated me like his friend. We always had lunch, dinner, tea and chatted for a few hours every time. Sometimes, he will call me to see what I am doing and how well I am. We talked about our work, families and everything. He is an extremely intelligent person like most of the academics in Hong Kong. What I like him most is that he is straightforward and honest. Whenever I want to do something he deems inappropriate, he will point it out right away and advise me to do in other way round. It's hard to have a critical friend or 'supervisor' like him. You know, we tend to be polite in order not to offend others, but he won't. I appreciate this kind of character very much.

No doubt, these two gentlemen do influence my career life very much and I respect both of them.

I.T. In English

On Monday, I taught a new cohort of NSS course. There were around 30 participants in the class. We discussed a lot of issues about NSS curriculum. One of the points is I.T. in English Education. One experienced teacher talked about how I.T. manlipulates our lives and he quoted his son as an example. He further commented his son spends a lot of time on I.T. because he needs to do many projects. He said even adults are no exception as they all have to check and send emails and use word-processor for their work. Of course, this experienced colleague did not complain about the present impediment. Instead, he simply reflected the truth. Then, another lady raised a point that I.T. is inevitable in today's world; however, through self-discipline and education, parents and teachers have the responsibility to tell children the purposes of using I.T. and monitor them how to use it. The argument presented by this lady also sounds sensible. Well, we didn't come to any conclusion, but I just concluded by saying that we had to strike a balance between the pros and cons of using I.T. in our everyday life.

Are Fathers Happy?

A newspaper report revealed that in Hong Kong, fathers are less happy than last year on Father's Day. The survey findings are interesting. Why? I guess. First, traditionally, mother always plays the supporting role to her kids. Children may think that mother is a more approachable and trustworthy member in the family. Unlike mother, father may play the role of a breadwinner who has been too tired or too busy to talk to his kids at home. The survey also reported that fathers never talk to their kids more than half an hour every day. The reason for this phenomenon is that father could be less talkative than mother or father is too carried with horseracing over weekends and Euro 2008. Second, it is always easy to make mother happy than father. For instance, if children buy a bouquet of flowers for their mother, she will be very happy. But I don't think fathers will be very elated or surprised when they receive flowers from their children. Likewise, giving a kiss to mother seems to be very natural and warm but not to father. A hug to father would be better. To be honest, it is difficult to buy a gift which makes father happy. How about DIY gift? Or some creative gifts such as a tailor-made T-shirt. Cooking a meal instead of dining out would be a good idea. Of course, we have to make sure our cooking skills are qualified. Buying your parents air tickets is another option especially if you are extremely busy on Father's Day. But this is the last resort!

Purdue University

During my stay in Purdue University, I found out that it is a lovely town. The weather is good in June. It ranges from 28 to 15 degrees Celcius and the day time is extremely long like many places in North America in summer. The boundary between university campus and the residential areas or even commercial areas is vague. When you are there, you have a warm and sweet feeling. In general, the pace of the town is not very fast but they are very nice to outsiders. The hotel that I stayed is part of campus premises and it has 120-year history. The hotel complex contains food court, musemum, reading rooms, ball rooms, dance hall, TV-game arcade and bowling alley and so forth. Though I just stayed in Purdue for 4 days, I love this place and definitely I would like to visit it again.

Symposium of Second Language Writing

During 5- 7 June, I attended the Symposium of Second Language Writing and the event was held in West Lafayette, Indiana in the States. On 4 June, I had to take a direct flight from Hong Kong to O'Hare Airport where is in Chicago. It took me 13.5 hours and then I had to make a transit from O'Hare to Indianapolis which took another 1.5 hours. By the time I arrived at Indianapolis, it was 6:40 pm, not Hong Kong time, but US time. Since one Hong Kong scholar and I met another Taiwanese scholar, we decided to hire a limo which cost us 30 US bucks each. Not too bad, it took me about another 1 hour. Eventually, I checked in at 9:30 pm on 4 June, 9:30 am on 5 June. At that time, I felt extremely exhausted and needed to prepare my presentation in the following day at 9:45 am (US time). But I was so excited about my talk and waiting for the next day to come.

On 6 and 7 June, all the parallel sessions were held by the invited speakers who are either renowned scholars in the second language writing or experts in EFL contexts of writing instructions. There were scholars from Brazil, Ukraine, Canada, US, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Mainland China, Japan, Spain, Israel and Netherlands. All these scholars highlighted the EFL writing instructions in their own teaching contexts. A lot of inspirations and stimuations have created during various keynote presentations. It is also interesting to note that what EFL writing instructions are happening in the other parts of the world! What a nice trip!