Make good use of resources, keep pace with the times, and inject vitality into English learning

Christian Alliance S.Y. Yeh Memorial Primary School Adhere to the concept of specialized education and promote English teaching, opening a window to the world for students, equipping them with good English skills, and entering their favorite middle school in six years. In the 2024/2025 high school promotion allocation, the school also delivered outstanding results. All graduates were assigned to their first and second choices, including many middle schools favored by parents. Principal Luo Jianyang frequently communicates with different stakeholders to grasp the latest trends in education, integrates and makes good use of resources inside and outside the school, continues to optimize the curriculum, integrates digital education and artificial intelligence tools, and cooperates with unique teaching plans to fully train students' English application and independent learning abilities.

Make good use of resources to support English teaching and create platforms to strengthen application capabilities

Principal Luo attaches great importance to English teaching resources and provides students with more opportunities to apply what they have learned. He believes that the first task is to accurately grasp parents' expectations for school English teaching. To this end, he actively collects relevant information and collaborates with the English specialist team to discuss practical plans to ensure that appropriate resources are introduced to meet the needs of teaching and students. In terms of resource allocation, the school actively cooperates with different off-campus institutions and introduces external resources. For example, as an "Apple Distinguished School", we provide students with a platform to showcase their English learning achievements through activities and resources from the business community or well-known organizations. Principal Luo pointed out: "No matter how much English knowledge students have learned, the most important thing is their confidence in English expression and practical application ability." Through cooperation with different institutions, we can create diversified practical opportunities for students, allowing students to improve their English proficiency in application and presentation, while broadening their horizons and effectively transforming various resources into assistance in English teaching.

Provide diverse learning experiences and deepen English learning effectiveness

The school actively provides students with diverse learning experiences to enhance their interest in English and their learning effectiveness. Regarding the theme of "Animals", in addition to the traditional teaching model, the school allocates resources to carry out external liaison work, striving to transform resources into practical learning experiences and extension activities. For example, we cooperate with organizations outside the school and invite professional teams to bring different animals to the campus so that children can get up close and personal with small animals. This change allows students to break away from the limitations of textbook pictures and gain an in-depth understanding of animal characteristics through personal touch, photo recording, and listening to detailed explanations. This not only enhances their interest in learning, but also strengthens their ability to use and understand English vocabulary in real scenes. The school hopes to promote such experiential activities to all grades, effectively integrate resources, and continuously optimize English courses to bring students a richer experience and enhance their English learning effectiveness.

Penetrate digital education and open a new chapter of intelligence

The school has always kept pace with the times and plans to fully integrate digital education into the teaching of various subjects to improve learning effectiveness. The school makes good use of government resources, such as special education funds for digital education and English, to organically combine digital education and English teaching. The teaching team actively researches the introduction of artificial intelligence tools, selects suitable teaching platforms, and strengthens students' independent learning abilities. For example, AI with automatic correction function is introduced to focus on improving students' English listening and speaking skills, or as enrichment exercises. Teacher Wang Wenrui, director of the English subject, said: "The school understands students' specific abilities and deficiencies in English through digital assessment, and then formulates follow-up plans according to the needs of each group, establishes learning files, and sets individual and class goals, so that teachers can provide targeted guidance and improve students' English performance."

Interdisciplinary collaborative teaching promotes independent learning

The school actively promotes inter-disciplinary collaborative teaching of English, linking English themes with national conditions, national security and values education, such as integrating character development into character description teaching. In practice, the school uses electronic learning resources and multiple learning platforms to enhance students' English application experience and sense of achievement, and stimulate their interest and motivation in learning English.

In addition, the school offers an interdisciplinary reading course for grades one to six, encouraging students to read English books in different categories so as to be exposed to English vocabulary in different fields. Teacher Zhou Xuan, director of the English subject, added: "The school integrates reading and vocabulary training into daily teaching, and cooperates with reading worksheets Cloze exercises to help students deepen their understanding of new vocabulary, promote their ability to express themselves in real situations, and enhance their self-confidence."

Systematic pinyin teaching lays the foundation for English learning

Considering that the primary 1 students come from different kindergartens and have different English proficiency levels. The school lays a solid foundation for students through the systematic Phonics English Pinyin school-based course. While imparting knowledge, the school helps students master pinyin and spelling skills. Starting from the first grade, teachers will teach different phonetic symbols step by step to ensure that students can master the entire phonetic symbol system proficiently by the third grade. This course not only focuses on pronunciation teaching, but also integrates story books, writing and reading training to teach children the skills of pronunciation and word concatenation while strengthening their understanding. It cultivates English word concatenation and reading and writing skills in an all-round way, allowing students to build their confidence in English on a solid foundation. When students firmly master this skill and know how to use it flexibly, it will be of great benefit to them in the future. Not only will they be able to understand knowledge more easily in the upper grades, but they can also rely on pinyin to try to understand the pronunciation of unfamiliar words when they encounter them. This will make them more comfortable in advanced English listening, speaking, reading and writing.

Create opportunities to comprehensively improve your English proficiency

On the basis of Pinyin learning in junior primary schools, third-grade students have sufficient ability to flexibly use Pinyin skills for self-study. Therefore, English school-based courses at the upper primary school level guide students to make good use of learning resources such as the Internet and AI tools to carry out self-study, and create diversified application opportunities for students to help students comprehensively improve their English abilities. In daily classes, teachers will arrange a large number of classroom tasks for group cooperation, allowing students to gradually explore according to the goals and tasks set by the teacher, and gradually complete the guiding questions through group discussions and independent search for information.

During the learning process, the school will also arrange for students to conduct group reports, encourage students to use electronic platforms such as Google Slide and Canva to produce results, and even design interactive games and awards sessions by themselves. The school hopes to break the previous teacher-dominated classroom model and create more opportunities for students to use and participate. It not only promotes students with higher abilities to learn from each other and stimulate progress, but also provides a clear framework and guidance for students with lower abilities to solidly accumulate English application and teamwork skills in practice. The students responded enthusiastically and participated enthusiastically. The school also aims to establish a positive learning atmosphere of mutual learning and common progress, so that students can become the real masters of the classroom.

The school also promotes school-based vocabulary and writing enhancement to improve students' English proficiency through fun silent reading, writing follow-up, and AI scoring standards. Teacher Wang pointed out: "The school integrates the matching of lower grade theme pictures and texts with the high-frequency writing words of the upper grade to enhance students' interest in learning; through error analysis and sharing of masterpieces, it promotes the progress and reflection of students' writing; it integrates the curriculum with AI scoring standards to enhance the quality of students' writing."

Student-led model, deeply involved in English activities

Principal Luo emphasized the importance of English application. By carrying out diversified English activities, he not only built an English learning atmosphere in the school, but also transformed the activity model into student-led and in-depth participation. Take campus English broadcasting as an example. In the past, it was mainly handled by foreign teachers. In the past two years, the school has significantly increased student participation, encouraging them to independently conceive and create stories. They can even contribute to the broadcast around specific themes, stories or issues, just like KOLs or YouTubers.

Not only that, but the campus "English Activity News" and other content also involve students' participation, allowing them to truly participate deeply and enjoy it. The school emphasizes that the core value of such activities is to allow students to actually apply English, and believes that the ability to actually use English is more important than simple accumulation of knowledge. Through students' independent planning and execution of various English activities, students' learning enthusiasm is effectively mobilized, allowing them to repeatedly use English in practice and further improving their English application ability.