High-quality English teaching, challenging yourself to pursue excellence

Confucian Tai Shing Ho Kwok Pui Chun College From the construction of the curriculum system to the innovation of teaching methods, from the improvement of teachers and students' abilities to the creation of a campus atmosphere, the school has always focused on the comprehensive development of students. Through progressive teaching arrangements, rich and diverse practical activities, and a complete support system, it helps students overcome English difficulties and remove obstacles to obtaining a university degree (the rate of obtaining university degrees this year is 56.4%, a record high), laying a solid foundation for future academic development and international exchanges. Principal Chow Kai Tik Brian I believe that students and teachers can continue to make progress, challenge their own limits, continue to pursue excellence, and embrace the bright road.

Pay attention to teaching team building and create high-quality English teaching

The school is well aware of the importance of team building and teaching innovation. Its English teaching team has a large proportion of young teachers, who are full of energy and enthusiasm for teaching. Since the beginning of the school year, the school has carried out many class observation and guidance activities and taught practical teaching skills to colleagues through demonstration classes. Class observation not only focuses on teachers’ teaching implementation, but also focuses on students’ classroom performance and learning effects. It also conducts a comprehensive review of the curriculum structure. To create a high-quality English course, teaching content must be systematically integrated, and all colleagues must brainstorm and contribute creative ideas.

A special task force was established to inject vitality into English teaching

In order to inject new vitality into teaching, the school has set up a Task Force to explore new teaching elements. Among them, Language Across Curriculum (LAC) is one of the core projects. Considering that many high school subjects are taught in English, including geography, physics, biology, chemistry, computers, economics, business, accounting and finance (BAFS), etc., the LAC project aims to combine these subjects and integrate English elements into the entire teaching process.

The school will hold a special meeting before the start of the school year to determine the teaching theme, and jointly design supporting teaching materials, which will be brought back to the classroom by subject teachers for implementation, and the test papers of related subjects will also incorporate LAC elements. In addition to course teaching and assessment, the school also builds an immersive English learning environment inside and outside the classroom through activities such as LAC Day and Game Day to help students lay a foundation in English to meet the future challenges of the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education Examination (DSE).

Bilingual teaching is step-by-step and the win-win development of subject and language

The school's English teaching implements a step-by-step connection mechanism. In view of the fact that most primary school students in Dabu District use Chinese to study general knowledge and mathematics, the school has set up a parallel model of Chinese classes and English classes at the junior high school level. Some subjects will be taught in English to gradually cultivate students' English thinking. After entering high school, most elective courses are taught in English, while retaining some Chinese-English bilingual groups. The concept of teaching in accordance with their aptitude is implemented to ensure that students with different language receptive abilities can keep up with the teaching pace and smoothly connect to the English teaching environment at the university level. This year, the school further integrated the LAC project, focusing on solving the problem of students' lack of English proficiency that hinders subject learning. At the same time, with the help of real scenes in each subject, it will feed back the improvement of English proficiency and achieve a win-win situation for subject learning and language development.

Create a full-environment English atmosphere and form a team of English ambassadors

Outside the classroom, the school actively creates a whole-environment English atmosphere and encourages English teachers and subject teachers to jointly carry out interactive activities using English as the communication medium during recess, lunch and other after-school hours. The school implements a six-day cycle system, in which English morning meetings are held on three days, and a lunch English activity that all teachers and students can participate in is arranged every week, allowing the use of English to penetrate into all aspects of campus life.

In addition, the school has also established a team of about 20 English ambassadors. As the mainstay of campus English promotion, they are responsible for receiving guests, introducing the school, organizing games, etc. in various school activities. This student-led team not only provides members with a large number of practical opportunities for English expression, but also promotes the awareness of proactive communication in English throughout the school and promotes the all-round development of students.

Flexibly adjust the teaching sequence to improve English learning efficiency

The school adheres to the guidance of students' needs, breaks the inherent order of teaching materials, and flexibly adjusts the teaching timing of grammar knowledge points. For example, passive voice (Passive voice) is traditionally taught in Form 2. However, considering that students only really need to use this grammatical point when writing experimental reports in Form 3, and students’ cognitive abilities and language foundation are more solid at this stage, the school adjusted it to be taught in Form 3 to closely integrate grammar learning with practical application scenarios to improve learning efficiency.

Improve the writing teaching system and comprehensively improve language literacy

Writing teaching is a key area of strengthening for the school, because writing ability directly affects students' listening, speaking, reading and other language skills, and it is an important way to train critical thinking and creativity. The school further improves the writing teaching system: all writing tasks include a complete link of pre-task preparation, task implementation and post-task sharing, and are no longer limited to teacher correction. After students complete their compositions, they need to deepen their learning through diary recording, group sharing, etc. Excellent works will also be shared with the whole school, allowing students to improve their reading skills through reading analysis, practice listening and speaking skills through oral sharing, and achieve an overall improvement in comprehensive language literacy.

Efficient joint lesson preparation mechanism enables teachers and students to make progress together and stimulate learning motivation

The school has established a complete teacher development support system. In addition to allowing teachers to learn from each other through regular teaching observations, it also implements an efficient joint lesson preparation mechanism. Different from simple administrative arrangements and coordination, the school's joint lesson preparation focuses on students' learning difficulties, jointly discusses teaching strategies, summarizes the teaching experience of the previous year, and continuously optimizes teaching methods, such as exploring the advantages of drama teaching compared with group discussions in specific content, etc., gradually forming a benign teaching and discussion atmosphere.

In addition, the school actively supports teachers to participate in off-campus professional exchange activities organized by the Education Bureau and other tertiary institutions. After teachers return from their studies, they share the latest teaching concepts and methods through teacher development days, joint lesson preparation and Google Drive to promote the professional growth of all teachers. The joint efforts of teachers and students have also created a good learning atmosphere. In addition to long holidays and after-school make-up classes, this year there are also new pre-school make-up classes proposed by students to further stimulate their learning motivation.

Provide oral training resources to prepare for the Diploma of Secondary Education Examination with confidence

In order to promote students' independent learning, the school introduced an independent learning plan and invested 200,000 funds to provide DSE oral training resources for Form 5 and 6 students. Students can form a group of four by themselves and use the account provided by the school to carry out oral practice. Among them, Form 5 students can participate in six training sessions, and Form 6 students can participate in ten training sessions. This model allows students to flexibly arrange training time before the exam, strengthen pronunciation, adaptability and thinking logic, reduce exam tension, and improve performance stability.

Exchange activities broaden horizons and deepen practical English skills

Overseas exchange activities are an important carrier for schools to expand students’ international horizons and deepen their English practical abilities. In recent years, the school's overseas exchange groups have broken away from the traditional language learning model and turned to thematic learning experiences: three years ago they visited Kyoto with the theme of art, the year before last they visited the Netherlands and Belgium focusing on architecture, and this summer they visited Germany and Poland with the theme of culture and economy.

In order to ensure the depth of learning in exchange activities, the school has established a complete learning system: before traveling, students need to read relevant books and collect information. The school also invites Polish English teachers in Hong Kong to teach local culture and common expressions; during the itinerary, different team members will be responsible for introducing attractions every day, and summary sharing sessions will be held every night. Students need to record their feelings on a dedicated page and actively communicate with the locals. Exchanges with local people - from supermarket staff to policemen and hawkers, try to communicate in English and Polish and integrate into local life; after returning, participate in the student union to edit small magazines and set up campus stalls to share local food, education, history, culture and national characteristics with teachers and students in the school. On December 4 this year, the school also invited the Polish Vice Consul to participate in the sharing activity to complete the learning loop.

The entire exchange process is student-led, and teachers only provide appropriate guidance. In the process of independently collecting information, practicing communication and sharing, students not only improve their English confidence and application ability, but also broaden their international horizons. Some students even have the idea of ​​studying abroad in Eastern Europe.