Construct diversified courses to comprehensively improve students’ English proficiency

H.K.T.A. The Yuen Yuen Institute Shek Wai Kok Primary School Since its establishment in 1982, the school has been based on the school’s purpose of “taking Tao as its foundation, morality as its transformation, cultivation as its teaching, and benevolence as its education”. Through holistic education that combines both moral character and academic performance, students can develop in an all-round way morally, intellectually, physically, socially, and aesthetically. Principal Mak Yi-wah and the teaching team firmly believe that Chinese is the foundation of all subjects. As long as the Chinese language foundation is solid, the performance of other subjects will naturally improve. Therefore, they pay special attention to students' English proficiency. By designing school-based courses and organizing different activities, they systematically build students' interest in learning English starting from the first grade, thereby improving their English proficiency.

Professional team compiles school-based curriculum to promote writing through reading

Reading is the only way to learn Chinese, so the school cooperates with foreign English teachers to jointly compile school-based reading and writing courses for grades one to three, so that the teaching content can be combined with readers to expand students' learning areas. Teacher Li Kaiqi, the course director, said: “Before teaching, foreign English teachers will first assess the students’ reading level and conduct Shared Reading and Guided Reading into groups according to different learning abilities. Reading (guided reading) activities. During the activity, the teacher will teach different reading skills and also ask questions on the reading material to deepen students’ understanding of the reading content.” After completing the reading activities, the teacher will arrange a variety of learning tasks, such as drawings, Scrabble games, table games, etc., to deepen students’ understanding of the key points of learning. In the senior grades, the school adopts the Key Stage 2 Integration Program (KIP), where foreign teachers or local teachers lead students to read English books together. "We will also select appropriate reading materials for "reading and writing" activities. After students finish reading, teachers will guide them to create content based on related content or style, such as assuming the role of the protagonist and continuing to create content, etc. to make the learning content more coherent."

Principal Mak said with a smile that among the four major areas of English listening, speaking, reading and writing, English writing is often the most daunting for students. For this reason, the school uses the Process Writing teaching model to guide students to gradually build their writing abilities. "The teacher will explain the language focus of the subject to the students before writing, so that students can focus on the learning focus and make use of relevant vocabulary or grammar to create short sentences during the learning process. When entering the writing part, students can use mind maps, 'Thirteen Types of Higher-Order Thinking', etc. to strengthen their understanding of related learning areas." Through systematic writing steps, students can consciously review their articles, sort out their own writing context, and gradually build their writing skills. At the same time, the school understands that mutual learning among peers can help students deepen their knowledge and learn from each other's strengths. Therefore, a peer review link is included before submitting the paper to the teacher for correction, allowing students to make corrections by deleting redundant sentences, adding new sentences, etc. to make the article more complete.

School-based Pinyin course to train English speaking skills

In order to improve their oral English skills and enable students to use English fluently to increase their life experience and learn about different cultures around the world, a school-based Pinyin course is specially designed for grades one to three. It is taught by foreign English teachers and teaches students correct pronunciation and intonation through singing, games, storytelling, etc., and builds a good foundation for English pinyin. "In class, we will use finger talk to teach students how to spell with syllables, virtually building their vocabulary library and laying a solid foundation for English conversation and writing."

By the senior grades, Pinyin courses will be integrated with teaching content. The school actively cooperates with the school-based support services of the Education Bureau to emphasize practical daily English. Teacher He Yanling, the head of the English subject, said: "By encouraging students to have more conversations in English, in addition to giving them opportunities to practice, it also allows them to understand the popularity of English in daily life." In addition, the teacher also combines pinyin courses with interviews for entering middle school. During the mock interview training, students are allowed to conduct personal introductions and group discussions in English. Through continuous accumulation of experience, they can improve and more calmly use their strengths to help them prepare for the best preparation for entering middle school.

Promote interdisciplinary collaboration and expand knowledge areas

Cross-curricular learning effectively trains students' comprehensive abilities such as language, knowledge, and data analysis. In this school year, the school has established cross-curricular collaboration between English and general knowledge subjects to build students' common abilities. "Take the first-grade general knowledge subject as an example. We specially selected the topic of 'My Campus' and the English subject for interdisciplinary teaching, teaching students additional English words about teachers in different subjects, campus equipment, etc." Principal Mak said with a smile that after the activity, students were able to complete a short essay using the sentence structures taught in the English subject and the additional words taught in the general knowledge subject, which greatly boosted students' confidence in English learning.