by Ingrid ChuSince the beginning of the 1990s, the Taiwanese government has carried out education reforms focusing on the improvement of English ability, yet language skills remain an obstacle for many students. Too much emphasis on vocabulary and reading skills has prevented students from speaking English in class. To fill this gap, a private English-language school called “Shuo Shuo Corner” was created by several enterprising NTU students in the Department of Foreign Languages.
Shuo Shuo Corner aims to provide high school students with a space where they can speak freely in English, and it specializes in courses that can help students improve their speaking ability. According to Simon Chen, the current president of Shuo Shuo Corner, the origins of the camp date back two years. Co-founder Ellen Sun, now a DFLL senior, first came up with the idea after she taught in an English oral training class during the DFLL winter camp in 2015. She found that her students were generally good at English, but they were reluctant to speak in class for fear of making mistakes. Believing that high school students lacked opportunities to speak English at school, Ellen decided to organize a workshop in summer vacation so that students would have more time to devote themselves to speaking English. This idea was finally put into practice in the summer of 2016. Ellen called together 12 DFLL juniors and 2 sophomores to hold the first Shuo Shuo Corner workshop. The very first workshop was composed of two stages, one in July and another in August. It contained various activities including role playing, presentations, and group discussions. All activities were conducted in English, and students were provided with comments and suggestions. In the second stage, for example, students were asked to do a group presentation based on any Taiwan-related topic and were given two weeks to prepare. After the performance, the DFLL students gave tips on how to have better composure on stage or how to speak powerfully. During their first camp, Simon found that most students were thrilled by these activities, treasuring the chance to speak in English. However, he also noticed a great disparity in their speaking skills. Yet it turned out that everyone was willing to help each other out, and the first camp was highly successful. ”Everyone is willing to give himself a chance,” said Simon with a sense of achievement. He realized that if students are given correct methods and a proper environment, they can easily enhance their English speaking ability. Through games and other activities, Shuo Shuo Corner has also taught students how to learn actively and in their spare time. When I interviewed him, Simon stated that establishing the camp was far from easy. Finding collaborators was the first problem. In the beginning, there were only ten volunteers who had a lot of work to do, ranging from enrolling students to promoting and designing the courses. However, in light of the great success of the camp last year, the co-founders hope to expand the scale of their club. Shuo Shuo Corner is developing its organization structure and is ready to become a formal school club. They hope that more DFLL students will be willing to help out, as well as students from other departments. Given that English communication skills is a common issue throughout Taiwan, Shuo Shuo corner is also trying to expand its target group from high school students to undergraduate and graduate students. This semester, they started working with NTU’s Foreign Language Teaching & Resource Center. Together they offer online and in-class oral training courses for NTU students, with themes ranging from daily conversation, common mistakes in English, English listening, and more. In the future, they hope to provide more advanced courses such as Seminar English. The group also hopes that these workshops can eventually become a nationwide movement. To supply more English resources, club members also regularly share useful information about English learning on their Facebook fan page. The new Shuo Shuo Corner Workshop for high school student is taking students right now. With eight classes costing only 600 NT, it’s an easy and inexpensive way to give students an opportunity to speak out – in English! a
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Authors
The Taida Student Journal has been active since 1995 with an ever-changing roster of student journalists at NTU. Click the above link to read about the authors Archives
May 2024
|