Ms Lin Yingting Say NO to Cellphones in Class

In class, teachers were seriously writing on the blackboard, but when they turn around, only see rows of students plying cellphones with heads down. Facing the phone addicts, do the teachers feel helpless?

In Ms Lin Yingting’s class, all the students’ cell phones are quietly lying in the storage bag. Everyone listened to the class carefully, except to bow to take notes; most of the students became the head-up.

Ms Lin Yingting in Class

 “At first, I was not used to the empty hand, and always wondered if someone would come to me on WeChat. After a period of time, I gradually got used to the class without cell phone, and could pay more attention to the content in class, and the efficiency of listening to the class was obviously improved. Now when I study by myself, I will also put away my mobile phone.” A student mentioned. 

Cellphone Storage Bag

Ms Lin said that the inspiration of “mobile phone storage bag” came from a news report. According to the report, cellphone storage bags were used in the public class in a university to avoid students playing with cellphones in class. At that time, Ms Lin felt that collecting cellphones was only a “palliative”, and did not pay much attention to it. However, slowly, she found that more and more students disturbed by the information popped out by WeChat or QQ, and some of them use the screen word fetching function without thinking. They can directly compare the Chinese meaning of the sentence without thinking even without inputting the letters, and some students just take photos of the courseware. In this way, students’ ability to infer the meaning of new words through context is reduced, and the practice of taking notes is also reduced, which will seriously affect the students’ adaptation to the English learning environment, the cultivation of language and academic skills. Therefore, Ms Lin began to use cellphone storage bag in the English class of Grade 2016, and it continued in Grade 2017.

Regarding the mobile phone storage bag, Ms Lin said frankly that it creates a learning environment with less interference for students, and help students transform from passive to active in class. However, how to improve students’ enthusiasm for listening to class? Innovative teaching content and methods are fundamental.

Work together to improve the teaching design

In Ms Lin’s class, students compared Yang Lan’s speeches in TED and Beijing Olympic Bid to discuss the influence of audience composition on the speech. They discussed the importance of cultural collision to reflect on their own culture from BBC’s Who on earth are we listening series. They practiced Cornell’s note-taking skills with Lecture Ready published by Oxford University. They went to Starbucks for field investigation, collected the information of “Huang Taiji” online, and also completed analysis and thinking of brand management cases from the perspective of catering culture. They watched the video of Khan Academy to discuss the application of Roman column in Jiageng Architectural style. Rich and innovative classroom content is inseparable from Teacher Lin’s intentions. In teaching and learning, Ms Lin’s teaching level has been continuously improved. She won the second prize and first prize in the 8th and 11th Young Teachers’ Teaching Competition respectively.

Teachers of English Teaching and Research Group

 What’s more, as the head of the English Teaching and Research Group, Ms Lin often organizes teachers to communicate and share the latest and practical teaching materials. Many students’ favorite teaching designs are born out of such brainstorming. Especially for the English graded teaching of freshman and sophomore, Ms Lin encourages teachers at the same level to use class time to solve students’ common problems, and use the 4 hours of work time in the office per week to provide one to one in-depth guidance for students in accordance with their aptitude, and mobilize students’ learning enthusiasm. Under the leadership and influence of Ms Lin, the teachers of International College exchange views with each other, creating a good teaching atmosphere. In recent years, our teachers have made great achievements in the national and school teaching competition. See the table below for details:

我院教师近年教学比赛获奖统计

Rigorous Teaching and Strict Training of Students

Sino-foreign cooperation provides students with different educational platforms. The step-by-step screening of “wide access and strict exit” actually has higher requirements for students’ learning and stress resistance. In English learning, there are graded teaching for freshmen and sophomores, rolling placements for sophomores, advancement and the final stage integrate with courses of foreign colleges, all have strict language standards; for professional teaching, periodic examinations and homework assessments, professional essay writing, foreign review, each procedure should not be neglected. Therefore, students in International College have more clear goals and academic planning than students of other institutions, and the pressure is greater.

Ms Lin was one of the strictest teachers in International College, from the small detail as line spacing, slide templates and English punctuation input methods, to the idea of entire report of speech. One assignment is usually required 4 to 5 drafts to reach the standard; many students are so nervous that they couldn’t sleep because they have to finish the first English speech without scripts the next day. After repeated rehearsals, Teacher Lin’s requirement for the speech time is accurate to plus and minus 30 seconds. The rigorous and deliberate practice has resulted in a leap from quantitative changes to qualitative changes in students’ language ability and stress-resistant learning skills.

Create a homely sense of belonging

Ms Lin and Students

 As the teacher in charge of the class, Ms Lin baked cheesecake on Thanksgiving Day and shared with students in the classroom. She taught yoga postures to help students relieve pressure, and recommended students to join the action community as volunteers to find more peer-to-peer partners; in order to encourage the class failed in the competition, she wrote a card with their names hidden to each student to boost morale; she arranged a drama with students and won the best class group and the best class drama. She prepared graduation photo album for students with the photos of daily life and text notes to commemorate; she prepared the customized cookies and “one person, one book” as the graduation gift, and also secretly collected photos of classmates with colleagues and found parents to record video message as a surprise to students at the graduation ceremony.