Chinese English

Can "Chinglish" be the variety of "World Englishes"?

I present the conception of "Chinglish" in the class of Technology & Literacy yesterday. Actually, I was really nervous before I present it. There were 25 students and two professors sat there to listen to my presentation. Most of them are "native speakers." Though I proposed the idea that Chinglish can be accepted in the world from population's point of view, I clarified that I am not from China but from a small country---Taiwan, before my presentation.
China and Taiwan are different countries, but ironically, we use the same language---Mandarin Chinese. I don't want to involve into any political issue in my presentation, but just fucus on the idea that if "Chinglish" can be accepted in the world, that would benefit a lot of Chinese English learners.
At the end of my presentation, I suggested that we don't need to teach students "Chinglish" becasue it exists already. I just want to argue that if we don't treat "Chinese English" as a native term, there would be more Chinese students have much more confidence in their English writing.
After I finished my presentation, lots of my classmates told me, "Monica, good job." "Monica, I like your presentaion." It's my first time to present the idea connected to my local langauge and culture. I am so happy to get most of American classmates' recognition.

Technology Teaching

Technology Teaching

I think this is an age of technology. It's so convenient for eveyone to access any high-tech equipment every day. When I take advantage of the convenience the technology brings to my life, I deeply appreciate the age I am in.

In teaching, I think it's good to use technlogy in the classroom. The students I teach are all about teenager. They spend a lot of time in internet everyday. If teaching can connect technolgy, I think they will be so interested in learning from it. Nowadays, though our school have enough money to change each classroom's technology equipment, I know they try hard to work on the goal of it.

It takes time to change the exterior equipment; meanwhile, teachers still need to equip themselves to be ready to use technology in thier teaching. They need to prepare themselves about as much professional technology as possbile to meet students' demand in learning specific field of knowledge from technology.

My future dissertation

My Future Dissertation
I might focus on the research of narrative writing in compostion class. As a second language learner and teacher, I know how boring the traditional writing class is no matter when I was a student to learn it or a teacher to teach it. I think the point lies in the topic of writing is too far away from the learner's life experience. Thus, I am interested in discussing the possibility and importance of teaching narrative in ESL writing classroom.
To teach narrative in ESL writing classroom might be a very controversial issue for the narrative is not treated as the acadmic writing. I will based on Bakhtin's viewpoint to go against the anti-narrative's argument that the validity of narrative is questionable.
I think this is an interesting field which I might focus on my future dissertation.

What is literacy?

1. What is literacy?
In my opinion, literacy is the knowledge which is formed by the social context we situate in.
We are what we are today is created by the whole social discourse and that empowers us to be "literate." I don't think literacy can be defined by the single concept but must be interpreted by the whole context.
2. How to teach literacy?
I don't think literacy can be taught. Students are literate before they come to classroom. I mean they are the creature of social and cultural context, so they were and are literating all the time. The only thing I think we need to teach them is to help them to do the self-consciousness. To help them to better understand themself, define themselves in thier own way rather than define themselves according to the literal definition which is defined by the theorist or textbook.

My experience in IUP

1. So far I enjoy the life in IUP. As an international student, I feel frustrated at the beginning
when I came to IUP. I can't get myself involved in this community in the first semester, but
now, everything is getting better. I think I learn a lot from the past two semesters. The most
challenging thing for me is to understand and to be understood in this academic community.
Anyway, I can see myself get the improvement more and more. Though there are a lot of
difficulties to study here, I know I can overcome them gradually.
2. I am interested in talking about the narrative pedagogy in writing discoure in my future
dissertation. I believe that the narrative writing can benefit students in second language
learning. I think I will talk about the important role the self identity may play when one
uses narrative in the writing.
3. I think writing can be based on technology and this idea will be applied to my future teaching.
As a teacher, I will let my students to use technology to write down their thoughts and feeling.
For instance, their thoughts and feeling can be shared from blog.