Teach English in Qigong Zhen - Qingyuan Shi

This unit once again introduced many new strategies for getting learners the productive skills of writing and speaking. Because I have not taught English in a classroom, but rather via phone and Internet with individuals, there were marked limitations on not only how the learners produced spoken English, as they had only the trainer as a conversation partner, but production of written English was severely limited thanks to the nature of the lesson. I think it would not take too much modification to make the writing tips practicable and engaging for one-on-one learners. One key point where my former lessons differed from the suggested speaking lessons in this unit was that there was little concern about embarrassing students in the one-on-one setting by correcting them, and each learner had specified his or her correction preference at the outset of the course. The options were immediate correction or correction at the end of the lesson, with a little flexibility if they wanted to be allowed to finish their thought. They could change this preference anytime. Many people only felt they would stop making fossilized or ingrained mistakes if they were interrupted right after they made a mistake, because they thought they would forget. I did not like to interrupt people because I did not want to break their concentration, but in some cases it did seem ineffective to tell them at the end of the thought, to say nothing of at the end of the lesson. It varied significantly based on the task at hand. It would make more sense to correct learners who were only producing a sentence within the context of a targeted speaking exercise or role-play or dialogue, as opposed to their feedback on an article.