(Fighting against New Coronary Pneumonia) Foreign teacher "cloud" affects Northwestern students: although they are close to each other
China News Agency, Lanzhou, May 9 (Zihan Liu Yutao) Affected by the epidemic, Maria, a Russian teacher at Northwest Normal University who returned to Russia to visit relatives during the winter holidays, failed to return to school on schedule. In order not to delay the teaching process, Maria uses Zoom video conferencing, WeChat, e-mail and other forms to conduct online classroom teaching, "seeing each other across the screen."
"Although it is distance teaching, we did not feel far apart, just like in the classroom." Maria said, "Although there are many difficulties in the class, the network is unstable, the communication is not smooth, etc., but everyone is very motivated. High, I am moved. "
In order to master the technology of online teaching, Maria consults the materials and continuously practices various software. "Now I can start multiple software and systems at the same time, communicate with students smoothly, and the atmosphere in the classroom becomes more and more active," she said.
In classroom teaching, Maria mainly adopts the task teaching method, the purpose of which is to practice students' listening, oral expression, writing and retelling what they have learned.
Maria said that although distance teaching cannot be as timely as classroom teaching, teachers and students can interact in a timely manner, but under the dangerous epidemic, online teaching has played an important role.
It is understood that there are currently 10 foreign teachers in the School of Foreign Languages of Northwest Normal University, including 6 English teachers, 1 Russian teacher, 1 Japanese teacher, and 2 Arabic teachers from the United States, Canada, South Africa, Thailand, the Philippines, and Russia Countries.
Due to the impact of the epidemic, many foreign teachers failed to return to school in time. For this reason, the school has established a group of foreign teachers to teach, and it is recommended that foreign teachers adopt a variety of online teaching methods to flexibly carry out online teaching. And the multilingual epidemic prevention knowledge collected and organized is promptly pushed to foreign teachers.
Ruth, an English teacher in the United States, overcomes the 13-hour time difference and teaches undergraduates in three classes at Northwest Normal University in 2019. Ruth often teaches live video for everyone at around 3am local time.
Ruth also corrects students' pronunciation through audio homework, so that every student can get the teacher's "one-to-one" comments and help.
Takeda Eiichi is a Japanese foreign teacher at Northwest Normal University. When the epidemic broke out, he came back to visit relatives in Akita Prefecture, Japan, during the winter vacation. Because he did not have paper materials on hand, he searched for information in many ways to make the online classroom lively and interesting.
Students like Takeichi Takeda's "Cloud Class" very much. Many students use "面 白 い" (interesting) and "优 し い" (kindness) to describe Takeda Eiichi's teaching style.
Takeda Eiichi said: "Online teaching has advantages, such as recording and broadcasting online courses can allow students to repeatedly study the difficulties and key points. Now we are also exploring various possibilities of this new form of teaching." (End)