Every year I teach writing class. The official title is “Basic Writing,” but on the first day of class I tell them the real name, (my name) for the class is “creative writing.” This is my third year teaching it and while I do different things every semester I still have a basic curriculum at this point. (I’m lucky because the school let’s me make my own curriculum and I am free to teach whatever I want.)
The first semester final has been the same project every year: write an original script. But I feel that scripts are meant to be seen, not read, so during our final class, the students perform their plays for their classmates. It’s usually really funny and everyone likes it a lot.
This year I made a small change. They still had to write a script, but on a whim I said, “you can either perform it in class, or make a video.” I wasn’t expecting much, these students have never made a video before and I thought maybe 1 or 2 groups would do it, while the rest would just perform it in class.
Turns out almost every group made their own video and I was BLOWN AWAY at how awesome they were. In fact I just have to share some of my favorites because I feel like a proud mom bragging about how advanced my kids are compared to the others.
This first one is called CCBC. It’s a parody of a CCTV news program. CCTV stands for China Central Television and is the government controlled media outlet here in China. They changed it to CCBC, which stands for China Central Becky’s Class, and they acted out “a typical day in a students life.” They even have hilarious outtakes during the credits. (I managed to upload this on youku, the Chinese youtube, so everyone in every country should be able to watch this.) The sound at the beginning is blown out, but it is not because of bad audio, it is a parody of the news show and the news show also has blown out sound.
This next video was just a small part of their play. The play was a “who wants to marry a millionaire” type dating show, with three women vying for the attention of an available millionaire. This video was the “get to know the millionaire” segment that showed you his daily life and how rich he was. I love how the students, especially the bodyguard, has a hard time keeping a straight face. (This one is on youtube only, so VPN is a required.)
This next one is about 3 “guys” who are talking about how they would woo the girls of their dreams. One guy is typical, one guy is romantic and the last guy is crazy (called 2B in Chinese slang.) It’s a little hard to hear the audio clearly, but luckily they added subtitles. (This one is also on youtube, so VPN required.)
So this is just a small sample (I have about 15 videos in total from 4 classes) to show you how much fun my students are, and give you a small peek into what goes on in an ESL classroom (and also why I like teaching in China so much). Chinese students are not known for being very creative, but it just goes to show that everyone is creative at heart, and with a little nudging from a teacher or friend, the long buried creativity comes roaring out.
Reason #853 Why I Love My Students
Becky! As a former English teacher, I have to say I feel exactly the SAME way. In my class, I used to tell my students they can either do a role-play in class or make a video about a given topic of each unit. I was just saying and I actually never expect them to do that, but surprisingly they made their own videos, most of which are full of creativity and surprises! Like what you said ,I do feel like a mom,being proud of my kids! That’s why I had soooo much fun in my class and my kids were inspired to make their voice heard and creativity roar out.
Thanks Danlee! When I was a student in middle school and high school I often asked the teacher if I could make a video instead of writing a paper, and many times they said yes. It’s totally so much more fun, and I think a much more meaningful experience then just doing the same old thing they’ve done many times before, ya know?