Wednesday, April 30, 2008

TALK TALK TALK

my laoshi & i were just talking about how much the kids in our class have been talking. to put things in an ugly manner, the children practically yak yak yak away all the time at the top of their voices! but after some discussion, we realised that we as teachers can be quite "can ren" (cruel in chinese), as how my laoshi puts it.

talking actually helps the children to verbalise their thoughts, polish up their speeches and enhance their imaginations. it is indeed sometimes, wrong of us to get the them to stop talking when they are playing. in fact, playing accompanied with their verbal skills is when their learning is enhanced and increase the level of scaffolding because they would be able to bring in their personal experiences as they interact. this explains how the numerous curiosities that were killed during our childhood days when our parent or teachers say that we should keep quiet or when they say that we talk too much.

but we do get carried away by the need to keep to our schedules, get too caught up with the focus of the academics which we need to teach, so much so that we tend to forget that these kids do deserve to live out their childhood though. it is however, despite the notion of having to keep up with the fast pace of the society, that we should encourage children to talk.

as my laoshi puts it, "xiang dang nian..." and she said, "gone were the days of tree-climbings, insect-catching and running around in a carefree manner in the nature."

she pens down @ 12:13 AM --------------------------------------------------------------