My Fulbright Year in Taiwan

The curriculum for English Village wasn’t working out for us. The lesson plans seemed stilted and unnatural, and the language level of the lessons wasn’t a good match for the language level of the students. The ETAs were complaining about the lesson plans, and the quality of the experience for the students was suffering.

I decided to take action and re-design the curriculum from the very beginning. The ETAs and I met several times, brainstorming ideas and talking about what an ideal experience would be, and how we could re-vision English Village.

The original lessons assumed that students come to English Village having prepared for the lessons. They teach new content in four different lessons in the course of one morning. We knew, though, that students don’t prepare for the lessons. Consequently, the lessons are much too hard for them.

We had to step back from the goals of the original lesson plans, which seemed to be to teach the language specific to the stations. The lesson plan for the restaurant station, for example, was a role play for eating in a restaurant. The lesson plan taught too many new expressions, like “how many are in your party?” and “What would you like to drink?” It was too much new language for the students. They don’t retain much, if any, of those lessons.

We want to use the environment, because there’s such great potential in the space. The situational approach allows students to role-play in a fun atmosphere.

We made new lessons based on a functional approach, building on language that the students already have learned, and giving them new situations in which to use the language. For example, in the restaurant station, we focus on phrases like “Do you have …?” and “I like …” We can thus incorporate language that they can easily use in situations that are particular to eating in a restaurant, like asking if the restaurant has a particular item.

I had to do most of the lesson planning myself, because the ETAs are both too busy with their regular teaching duties, and they don’t have the background in functional language teaching. I bought us some time with the administration to field test and refine the new lessons. We have been running the new lessons for a few weeks now. The ETAs agree that the new lessons are an improvement over the old lessons, and we’re revising the lessons for two or three stations.

In the end, we will have a curriculum that I can stand behind, that we all believe in, and that will give the kids an experience that is enjoyable, memorable, and that will allow them to use their English to interact with a native speaker.

Working on these lessons has been one of the most rewarding experiences that I’ve had in Taiwan so far this year.