Visit II: Melbourne Grammar Senior School

The second school visit.

What a stark contrast to the previous school.



The Melbourne Grammar School is a private boys' school, with its population of students mostly European, along with around 20% - 30% Asians. The campus is gargantuan, and it doesn't at all look like a secondary school. It looks more like a university, with its own cinema, performance hall, orchestra rehearsal hall, dormitories, standard swimming pool, gym, weight room... the list could go on and on.







Although the hardware is so advanced and developed, I found that the approaches used in teaching another language is very similar to that of Hong Kong. My observations were based on two lessons - Year 11 German and Year 11 French.

In the German class, the theme of the lesson is on the German school system, e.g. in what year do children study kindergarten, primary school, secondary school, the subject streaming, etc, and the main foci are vocabulary and pronunciation along a bit of grammar as well. In that lesson, as far as the staging is concerned, there didn't seem to much staging, as students were given worksheets, which seemed to photocopies, to work on, and the teacher would ask students for answers. There was also a reading part where the students were given a German text, and students took turns reading. The teacher usually asked for peer correction before giving her own feedback. There was also a teaching assistant who acted as an advisor and went around the room to check on students' progress as they were working on their worksheets and answer any questions they might have.

Aside from the extra teaching assistant, the lesson was very similar to typical English lessons in Hong Kong, where worksheets and exercises are given and language is practiced through repeated drilling. The main difference is the teacher needed not try very hard to extract responses from the students. In Hong Kong classrooms, students are usually very reluctant to speak up or ask questions.

In the French class, there was only one teacher, and the focus was on direct and indirect speech as well as listening. This class was very similar to the German class, where students were given worksheets, and the teacher asked for answers after a certain amount of time.

Though both classes were mainly taught in English, in the latter class, the teacher liked to code-switch and use the target language to pose questions to the students. The students usually were able to comprehend what the teacher had asked.

For the French class, in the listening part, the teacher stopped the tape when she saw that her students were having difficulties and read the tape script herself at a slower pace. She then played the tape again for her students to check their answers. This doesn't not usually happen in Hong Kong classrooms. Teachers usually play the tape once and then check the answers with the students. I think the approach used by the French teacher is a lot more effective because we need to take into consideration the students' standard in the target language when giving them tasks.

It could be just me, but it seems that while the hardware of the school is very developed and modern, the teaching methods adopted by the teachers are quite traditional.

Visit I: Springvale Primary School & English Language Centre

The first school visit.

And what a visit it was.

The school has a mixture of multiple cultural backgrounds, including Vietnamese, Cambodian, Chinese, Sudanese, Pacific Islanders and Burmese. Some of those students are actually refugees - victims of war and disaster.

Upon our arrival, we were broken up into groups and sent to different classrooms to observe classes of different years. My group and I visited 2 classes, one comprised 10 students, all of whom were 5 to 6 years old, while the other consisted of 7 students who were around 10 - 11 years old.



The atmosphere is very much different from Hong Kong. To begin with, the number of pupils is very small when compared to the 35 - 40 students Hong Kong classrooms typically hold. Because of this, the teacher is able to pay more attention to each of the students and know more about each individual. In the younger class, as we were observing the children work, she would tell us about a certain student's character every now and then.



In addition, unlike the popular chalk 'n' talk approach adopted by many teachers in Hong Kong, the teachers there liked to use activity-based learning and elicit responses from the students instead. For example, for the younger class, the teacher let her students do hands-on activities like coloring and matching to learn the letter 'b' and some letters which start with the letter. For the older class, the teacher only asked questions and elicited responses from her students; further guiding questions were asked if needed. The teacher also let students use building blocks to learn about fractions.

I believe making use of activities to help students learn is a much better method than lecturing them. This prevents students from losing attention easily and allows them to learn through hands-on experience, helping them to put what they have learnt into their long term memory.



In the Hong Kong context, it is difficult to implement activity-based learning to a large extent because of the often packed syllabus. Therefore, a possible change would be to have a little bit of lecturing at the beginning of a lesson to present the background knowledge needed to carry out subsequent activities.



Seeing how harsh the background of most of the kids at the school is, I can truly understand how lucky and spoilt many of the students (including myself) in Hong Kong are. We should really cherish our opportunities to learn and be educated.

Impression of MELBOURNE

Tranquil.

Laid back.

Green.

Welcoming.



Those were the first things which came to mind upon my arrival. Because I had lived in Vancouver and Burnaby, Canada for four years, Melbourne quickly reminded me of life there: the fresh air, the trees, the electric cables above ground, the lack of high-rise buildings... the list could go on. For a moment, I thought of the word 'home'.



Then I remembered the coldness and the dryness I'll have to cope with for the 8 weeks to come; 'home' quickly dissipated.

I am no stranger to life outside of Hong Kong, so I wasn't as excited or nervous as everyone else. Yet, having been in Hong Kong for almost 9 years, it feels great to sort of break loose from the forest of metal and concrete. Being able to see for miles without any obstruction from a tall building is really a sight for sore eyes for me.

And the air? Man, the air in Hong Kong can't compare to this.

So far, so good in Melbourne.