What is your cup of ‘TEA’?

When I first had dinner with my host family, Cathy (my host mum) kindly asked, ‘Summer, what do you want for drinks?’ ‘Tea, please’, I replied immediately. What I then drank was:

Then I realised that English ordinary tea meant ‘tea with milk’, while Hongkongers named it ‘milk tea’. If I want to have a cup of ‘pure’ tea here, I will have to say ‘tea without milk’.

(UK: tea = tea with milk; HK: tea = pure tea)

Hong Kong is well-known for its Hong Kong-style restaurants. People will generally have their meals accompanied by a cup of milk tea. Besides, Hong Kong has a unique milk tea called ‘Silk stockings milk tea’ which is famous for its smoothness, thickness and smell.

Talking about tea, I found that there was a considerably big difference between the tea cultures of English and Chinese. The former emphasises ‘quality’ like ‘slow eating’ and daintiness, while the latter greatly demands for ‘efficiency’.

An English afternoon tea is a light meal typically eaten between 3pm and 5pm. Traditionally, loose tea is brewed in a teapot and served in teacups with milk and sugar. This is accompanied by sandwiches, scones or muffins (with clotted cream, margarine and optional jam), cakes and pastries. The food is often cold-served on a tiered stand. In everyday life, many British take a much simpler refreshment consisting of tea and biscuits at teatime.

Having an afternoon tea (‘high tea’ has recently become a term for elaborate afternoon tea in Hong Kong, though this is an American usage and mainly unrecognised in Britain) in Hong Kong is a very posh activity. While most of the people are still burying themselves in their work, only those affluent can spare time to have an afternoon tea. Furthermore, a formal afternoon tea is nowadays taken as a treat in a hotel, cafe or tea shop where these are places considered as upper-class.

On the contrary, having tea in a Chinese restaurant is very common and popular in Hong Kong. People will customarily do that during weekends (normally in the mornings and afternoons). This is quite often regarded as a family gathering activity. Imagine if the restaurant is fully-seated, it will be very noisy everywhere with people chatting, TV programmes being broadcasted, waiters and waitresses dashing here and there, etc. In addition, we have various kinds of Chinese tea, such as Jasmine tea, Oolong tea, etc. Unlike the English afternoon tea, all the food (i.e. dim sum) is steamed in a bamboo container. Cooks and waiters have to be very quick in order to ensure the food served is hot enough.

        

I love drinking Chinese tea not only because there is a wide diversity of tea, but it can also be mixed with herbs and served naturally as medicine. For instance, chrysanthemum tea added with several particular herbs can cure sore throat. Tea is not merely something thirst-quenching, but something good for health as well.

P.S. Dawn, please remember to try the ‘Silk stockings milk tea’ when you come to Hong Kong!

What appears SIMPLE to native speakers is actually THE HARDEST for the non-native ones!

It is always fun to analyse languages. Different languages have their unique linguistic features and grammatical rules. For instance, French splits up nouns into masculine and feminine; Czech separates nouns into subjects and objects; and English divides nouns into countable and uncountable.

Focusing on English language, the meanings of nouns will always be altered when they are transformed from countable to uncountable (or vice versa). If one mixes them up, it may produce ambiguity and misunderstanding, or even result in embarrassment. For example, someone writes the following in a business annual report: ‘Over the past two years, our company gained 10,000,000 turnovers.’ Readers will most likely be confused by the word ‘turnover’. Does it refer to ‘the amount of business that the company did in that period of time’ (uncountable), or simply mean ‘the fruit pies’ (countable)?

‘A dog’ or ‘Dog’?

Another interesting observation is the way to differentiate between the nouns for food (uncountable) and the nouns for animals (countable), e.g. [1] Would you like a dog? (countable = an animal); and [2] Would you like dog? (uncountable = food, i.e. meat). If you say the latter in a pet shop, it will probably sound a bit odd to the listener.

Non-native speakers always find great difficulties in distinguishing countable nouns from uncountable ones. I believe teaching nouns will be even more challenging than learning them. There are a number of ways to tackle the problem:

First of all, teachers can raise students’ awareness that the misuse of countable and uncountable nouns may cause misconception and awkwardness. Moreover, students should be encouraged to build up a habit of looking up the dictionaries. Last but not least, teachers can create a culture of reading by selecting suitable materials for students. For example, if teachers want to talk about nouns of food, they can look for recipes. The more extensively and frequently students read, the more benefited they will be.

Week 4: 24 November 2010 (Wednesday)

Our world urges for PEACE, LOVE and CARE!

Due to the unexpected adverse weather condition, our trip to Whitby was cancelled. We then went to Eden Camp which I at first thought it would be quite boring. Surprisingly, I found the trip worthwhile and unforgettable.

Eden Camp is a museum which consists of over 20 huts illustrating various scenes of the two World Wars. We have visited, for example, the huts displaying an air-raid shelter, military base, prison, etc. Walking through the huts with different light and sound effects, settings, dummies, etc, I was terribly shocked.

In school, I studied World History until Secondary 5 (16-year old). To be honest, I found studying the subject was completely a nightmare since it had never been interesting at all to learn and memorise loads of facts and data (e.g. years of …), as well as complicated terms. Solely with the use of illustrations in the textbooks, I could hardly associate myself with those people in the past.

Numerous scenes of the Wars such as the Holocaust, Japanese invasion and massacre to China, maltreatment to the prisoners of war, etc. vividly appeared in my eyes. Having viewed the pictures, felt the atmosphere and even touch the artifacts, I could imagine how miserably people were suffering! Those war behaviours were just so brutal and merciless that could never be unforgivable. Above all, history will judge.

When I first arrived here, I always saw people, particularly the older ones, wearing a little red flower pin on their clothes. I straight away asked my host family about its origin, and found it was called ‘poppy’. Poppies have long been used as a symbol of both ‘(eternal) sleep’ and ‘death’: ‘sleep’ because of the opium extracted from them, and ‘death’ because of their (commonly) blood-red colour. In the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, artificial poppies are generally worn from the beginning of November until 11th November for the commemoration of those who died in wars.

When I came to the last hut, it was a small chapel. I saw poppies everywhere. It had also hung many boards in memory of the sacrificed soldiers and other brave people. All of them were undoubtedly the national heroes. However, who can be the ‘true’ hero in the human history? People who fought in the wars, or the Nobel Peace Prize winners? I think everyone can be a hero. What a hero does is he / she will do his / her utmost for the sake of the world, and what the world needs is love and care! History is just like a mirror which we can have reflections of ourselves. Human beings should learn from the sorrows and grieves induced by wars, and never repeat the history again. Our world is beautiful because there is still peace, love and care – the most precious virtue of human nature!

Finally, I would like to share three of my favourite songs:

1) What A Wonderful World

I see trees of green, red roses too

I see them bloom for me and you

And I think to myself what a wonderful world

I see skies of blue and clouds of white

The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night

And I think to myself what a wonderful world

The colours of the rainbow so pretty in the sky

Are also on the faces of people going by

I see friends shaking hands saying how do you do

They’re really saying I love you

I hear babies cry, I watch them grow

They’ll learn much more than I’ll never know

And I think to myself what a wonderful world

Yes I think to myself what a wonderful world

2) Blowing In The Wind

How many times must a man look up

Before he can see the sky?

Yes, ‘n’ how many ears must one man have

Before he can hear people cry?

Yes, ‘n’ how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?

The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind

The answer is blowin’ in the wind

3) Heal The World

There’s a place in your heart and I know that it is love

And this place could be much brighter than tomorrow

And if you really try you’ll find there’s no need to cry

In this place you’ll feel there’s no hurt or sorrow

There are ways to get there if you care enough for the living

Make a little space make a better place

If you want to know why there’s a love that cannot lie

Love is strong it only cares for joyful giving

If we try we shall see in this bliss we cannot feel

Fear or dread we stop existing and start living

Then it feels that always love’s enough for us growing

Make a better world make a better world

We could fly so high let our spirits never die

In my heart I feel you are all my brothers

Create a world with no fear together we’ll cry happy tears

See the nations turn their swords into plowshares

We could really get there if you cared enough for the living

Make a little space to make a better place

(Chorus)
Heal the world make it a better place

For you and for me and the entire human race

There are people dying if you care enough for the living

Make a better place for you and for me

Week 4: 22 November 2010 (Monday)

Methods Lesson: Error Correction and Giving Feedback

What an interesting lesson! In the past, I never thought that there were numerous methods for correcting errors (especially the grammatical ones). By the end of today’s lesson, I realised that teachers indeed could have various ways to correct and give feedback to a single error.

Every coin has two sides. Each strategy has its own pros and cons. Whatever methods teachers apply, the most important issue is students should never be demotivated or discouraged to learn from their failures. Teachers should always try their best in providing students with constructive feedback as well as encouragement. Learning right from wrong with a motivating atmosphere can make students become more conscious of their errors and avoid from repeating them.

Among the correction techniques in writing tasks, my favourite one is ‘highlighting the GOOD but not the BAD’. This is really very positive. ‘Separate feedback document’ is also beneficial to students, but it may take time to do so. Above all, there are no ‘BAD’ but only ‘LAZY’ teachers in the world. I will employ these techniques in my teaching as long as they are helpful to my students.

Week 3: 15 November 2010 (Monday)

Culture & Society Lesson: Newspapers

When I was in secondary schools, I always asked my teachers the ways of improving my English language. The model answer was often ‘extensive reading – especially reading the newspapers’. What kinds of newspapers, however, should students read then? There are only few English newspapers published in Hong Kong. Fortunately, their standards are in general quite high in terms of the contents as well as the language used. Reading English newspapers in Hong Kong is, therefore, regarded as ‘posh’. Nevertheless, a considerable number of students find it difficult to read since most of the news articles are written in formal English. Over the past few years, the popularity of tabloids has risen. With shorter lengths of texts, will students then find it easier to read English newspapers?

Today, we analysed two British newspapers, namely The Sun (tabloid) and The Guardian (broadsheet). With the same piece of information, their contents varied a lot in terms of the use of vocabulary, and the writers’ attitudes and tones. Having supported by facts, figures and quotes from recognised people, The Guardian apparently was written in a more neutral and objective tone than The Sun. Its language used was also more formal, controlled and concise.

Despite the fact that the sentence structure of texts in The Guardian was longer and more complex, it was interesting (and surprising) that we all found it easier to read. It was mainly because The Sun was written in more idiomatic (e.g. direst of straits = very bad situation or big problem) and chatty language (e.g. slang). What the most challenging for non-native speakers was its frequent use of puns and jokes (e.g. Pension potty).

However, it is sometimes still fun to let students read the tabloids. In my opinions, teachers can make good use of either the broadsheets or tabloids, provided that their contents are proper and appropriate enough to suit the abilities of students. For example, I would rather prefer The Guardian as the teaching materials to The Sun because the latter consists of abundant gossips, scandals of celebrities and nudity.

Weeks 2&3: 12 (Friday) & 18 (Thursday) November 2010

We finally had our first micro-teaching practice done! To be honest, there was much room for improvement. I did also learn a lot by observing my peers. Let me jot down several points for reflection:

First and foremost, I must improve my handwriting and board organisation. Apart from that, more visual and audio aids can be employed in order to arouse the interests and attract the attention of students. ‘Realia’ can also make things come alive. A good teacher should have thorough preparation.

In addition, my classroom management skill needs to be sharpened. When some students do not behave well, I will tend to be a little freaked out. What I am still lacking in is the confidence in being a teacher.

Last but not least, a good teacher must attend to every single detail. Teachers, especially of foreign language teaching, must be very accurate in their instructing language. For example, the following two questions, which were about occupations, appeared in one group’s PowerPoint: [1] Where do you work? (Workplace) and [2] What you do? (Job nature). Without being pointed out by the observing teacher, the whole class could hardly realise that the structure of the questions was inconsistent.

Being a second language learner, we may not be always conscious of this kind of ‘minor’ mistake. Moreover, Hong Kong teachers are just so busy that they can hardly squeeze extra time to revise their teaching materials. Perhaps in the above circumstance, only few students can be smart enough to point the mistake out. Most of the students will, however, simply learn that passively. Whatever reason it is, teachers should try their utmost to be detail-minded.

Above all, ‘Practice makes perfect’. The more you prepare and more frequently you practise, the more well-organised the lessons will be. This is not only for the sake of teachers, but also for the good of students.

Week 2: 8 November 2010 (Monday)

School Visit

We went to visit Burnholme Community College for lesson observation. I felt really excited about that because I always thought the school environment and the learning and teaching in the UK were very different from those in Hong Kong.

The education in Hong Kong have long been criticised as exam-driven and teacher-led, while the foreign or western one emphasises student orientation. Having visited the school, I found that the learning atmosphere here was far more relaxing and enjoyable.

First of all, there is less classwork in lessons, or I should better say, work in class is usually shared with others. Hong Kong students are, however, used to work individually. Through peer collaborations (like group discussions), the pressure and workload of students will largely be reduced.

In addition, classes in the British schools are much smaller than those in Hong Kong. That means teachers can have more opportunities to focus on individual students. As a result, students can receive more intensive care and attention from teachers. With smaller classes, interactions between teachers and students as well as between students and students can be more easily facilitated. Above all, student learning can be ultimately enhanced. That is why educators in Hong Kong have always been urging for small-class teaching.