Letter of Gratitude - Headmaster Luo, Chang Xing Center Primary School

Since March of 2008, many Xu Bo volunteers have worked at Chang Xing Center Primary School on Chang Xing Island. This island is just north of Shanghai in the middle of the Yangtze River. This school has been very supportive of the effort to promote cultural exchange and English learning through the use of foreign volunteers. In the letter below Headmaster Luo expresses his appreciation to past Xu Bo volunteers and offers suggestions for future volunteers.

Gratitude for Foreign Volunteers on our Campus

12 December ,2008

Since last March of 2008, foreign volunteers from your organisation assigned to help with the oral English courses in our school have yielded a great harvest for our educational region!

   1. They have enhanced the interest of the students when they are learning English. First of all,
      students are willing to approach the foreign teachers and try to learn more about them
      because they are curious. Second, compared with the somewhat severe atmosphere created by
      many Chinese teachers, foreign teachers provide a cozy and comfortable environment for
      students so that the children can get more emotional and joyful experience than ever before.
      Moreover, the teaching methods used by foreign teachers in the English Corner sessions are
      mostly games and rhymes. Since children love games, this enhances the childrens'interest
      in learning.

   2. The atmosphere for learning English has become richer and more closely approximates real life.
      Our Chinese teachers typically pay more attention to the tools, books, and grammatical
      exercises that have been designed in old ways, but the tools and methods of the foreign
      teachers are much richer. The pictures, songs, and rhymes they provide are often more
      closely related to current life, keeping students interested and allowing them to acquire
      more knowledge about western culture indirectly, through colorful pictures and enjoyable songs.

   3. The presence of the foreign volunteers gives our Chinese teachers a wonderful opportunity
      to communicate with foreign teachers in their daily routine. The English
      communication capability of our teachers is improved via chatting in daily life!
      Our teachers have more chances to hear pure oral English and amend their own. They
      also can discuss things like grammar and idioms to learn more about the language than they
      easily do through books.

   4. We are deeply impressed by the foreign teachers’ willingness to work hard at no profit
      to themselves to help us. Knowing that they have traveled a long way from their
      comfortable western homes, to work on our small island campus we are greatly moved
      by their generosity and they have our deep gratitude.

Let me also take this opportunity to express two suggestions for future foreign teachers:

   1. Because of their lack of teaching experience, foreign teachers have to spend some time
      to adapt and get familiar with the teaching methods here. For this reason, we
      give them a period of time to watch and learn from our teachers. This training
      time can take almost a week and reduces their productive classroom time. Once
      they start teaching, it often takes a week or two for them to learn to develop
      effective lesson plans and teaching techniques. Since many of them stay only
      about four weeks, they end up leaving their teaching when they just get accustomed
      to it! So I hope that future volunteer teachers can stay longer, like John, who
      stayed for three months last fall. When they have longer time to develop and
      deliver their lessons, the students have time to get to know their style and
      methods and their English benefits greatly.

   2. Because of the rural location of our campus and the fact that our students are in the lower
      grades, the students here don't absorb knowledge as swiftly as those in city life or
      those from higher grades. So, the teachers are required to repeat what they teach
      again and again by different methods, especially for the young kids. For example,
      our teachers employ methods such as oral repetition, group reading, "rush-answering"
      according to questions or pictures, group contests, student-to-student conversations,
      and student-to-teacher conversations. Without using these multiple methods, we have
      seen that students often will not hold onto the lesson being taught. I would
      like the foreign teachers to be aware of this phenomenon so they can adjust their
      teaching styles accordingly.

In closing, let me say that we are very grateful that the foreign teachers add vitality and happiness to our campus. Our gate will always be wide open for them!!

Headmaster Luo,
Chang Xing Center Primary School