I currently have nowhere to channel my debating drive, so therefore I have to turn to the digital portal known as the internet. So here it goes, I will be typing on something we all know and love: Chinese lessons by LCL.
For all people taught by her, you should know the strategies and 'tactics' are employed to help us score in our class. According to her, she adopts some strategies to help us better. Let us take a closer look, shall we?
Firstly, we see a 'Teach Less, Learn More' strategy being employed. Students of the class are divided into groups and are made to present a short summarisation of an entire chapter as well as answer any questions at the back of the chapter. While I agree that having students to teach is quite clever and that it can help the student to learn more, how is it going to be effective if your every move and answer is just going to be heavily criticized? You should know. There is obviously a standard set to follow, and when it is not met, scoldings are issued. The fact that there is a single standard set by her that we all need to conform to, how is this effective learning? How are we promoting diversity if there is only a single way of answering the questions and then get punished for not answering the questions incorrectly or simply not answering at all?
Secondly, we know what makes up a majority of our work. Literally translated, it means 'Practice pen, practice word'. Face it, it's mindless copying. Does it help that we copy out the phrase book umpteen times and nothing good comes out of it? A result of copying too much does not result in learning something, but rather the time spent has been wasted. And this is time we could be using to do something much more constructive, like studying. Indeed, the combined time spent on lessons, time during group discussions and copying out lines far exceeds the combined time we spend on our other subjects.
Thirdly, we see a large emphasis on work punctuality. Now this is not wrong, but let the time fit the work. How do you expect us to copy out four chapters of the phrase book, complete our corrections, finish a new article review and read through a book thoroughly in just two days? Its simply psychotic to expect this much in two days, not counting homework received from our other subjects. Is it fair that students in her class have less time to spend on studying other important subjects like mathematics and chemistry? Because of all the time that is put into this subject, the students involved would be disadvantaged in terms of academia.
Is it logical to spend this much time on a subject that few would use as part of their L1R5? Chinese has become a mediocre subject (even more than it was before) because that is how the class is learning.