Teaching is always a great fun for me, because I do not teach people simply knowledge, but how to be a useful human being. And to teach the others how to be a holistic human being is definitely challenging.

English Writing

Writing is often taken as one of the language skills language learners need to develop. But different from the other skills, writing usually comes later, for it ranks after listening, speaking, and reading. For me, this is not only an issue of sequence. It implies the depth of difficulty which outdoes the other three. In this sense, all the other previous skills are basics for one to develop writing.

Writing is also generally considered as an output. Then it is interesting to look at how people reveal their points of view on topics of common interest. In the process of "watching" how others say things, very often I join in them, either making remarks on how things should be said in an English way, and, putting myself in the shoe, I demonstrate to them how I would say the same thing in the same given situation.

I began to teach English Writing since 1992, soon after I joined the Foreign Languages Department. Over the years, I developed my own philosophy of writing and teaching the course.

English Writing is often offered in the junior year and lasts till the 7th semester of a 4-year program. However, this course is moved to the sophomore year and continued in the third year. I have taught both our regular students pursuing a 3-year college degree or 4-year BA diploma. However, sometimes the teaching became rather pressing for I was told to incorporate the contents with the annual Band-4 National Exams.

I also had the pleasure of teaching our high school teachers in the region pursuing a BA degree through correspondence courses.

To both types of students, I want to say "thanks you" for sharing with me the great fun and wisdom in piecing ideas up into a bigger frament that communicates things.

At the moment, I am looking at how writing is best conducted in th elight of Sperber-Wilson's Relevance Theory (RT).

English Reading

Quite similar to writing in the depth of difficulty, reading is something dealt with after listening and speaking. But quite different from writing, reading is considered an input. Inference and comprehension play cardinal roles here.

I began to teach reading almost at the same time as I agreed to take up writing. Always, from the beginning till now, I am enthusiastic about it. It is, for me, not only a way to find out what is in the minds of the many brilliant writers, but also how they effectively tell the readers what hey have to say. In teaching, I learn to better myself too. I guess this is one of the courses that I will never get bored of.

I have enjoyed teaching my second year students in th epast few years. They are both a joy to have in class and my brainstorming for many topics in life.