Dear Cosine,
Time flies. It has been a half year since I first wrote the letter to you. Everything has changed in these short six months. The semester would end next Thursday, which means today is the last time to join the course of Professor CC.
I have joined three linguistic courses after I studied at NCCU. Three of them are very different, especially in the course “Language Learning” this semester. The courses I studied in the previous semester are more about teaching the basic knowledge of linguistics. For example, Psycholinguistics, Language Variation, and Computer Language. We even need to learn how the brain works when people speak, while the courses this semester are really different. This time we mainly learned about language learning and teaching. It an interesting experience that we have to try to teach someone else a language that none of us have learned before. I enjoyed these courses very much because this is very funny. The way we learned this semester is not old-fashioned and inflexible such as just listening to what the teacher said or reading the teaching material. Professor CC provided us a new way to learn and even take tests. I have learned a lot this semester for not only the knowledge but also teamwork. It is very important to participate in every discussion and events. If I do the report alone I may be not that active and hardworking. While there are many parts that require cooperation with others in these courses this semester so I pay more attention to the classes.
Aryna, Kaelyn, and Lucy are in charge of the course design. Video editing is one of my hobbies so I volunteer to do the video part. All of the groups need to provide a video to show everyone in the class this week. The content of the video needs to be about the process of learning the language and how we taught it to others. I told Aryna, Kaelyn, and Lucy that we can divide our video into four parts: Introduction, division of work, reflection and improvement, and the ending. Each of us is responsible for one part, and there would also be the notes, learning process, and teaching process in the video.
This is the thesis statement of our teaching: Although it’s hard to catch up with a language in a short period, we believe that by watching videos about Cantonese and using some apps, we are able to communicate with people in Cantonese in restaurants.
We could also watch others’ videos in class. I noticed that every group has its own style of video. Some of them are very clear that I could see the whole process of their teaching project. Some of them are a little bit too random that I could not know what they are doing. However, nobody could be perfect with no shortcomings. That’s why we should watch others’ videos and learning.
The classes ended this week, which means the winter vacation is coming. What are you going to do this winter? Having some delicious food with family or going on a trip would be fun. I think I would learn more about Japanese and Cantonese if I am free.
See you.
Sincerely,
Diana.