During Language Camp B by Yuanyi Tan

       So, here it came the very day. We set off early in the morning, everyone was on the dot (a round of applause for our punctuality ^^). After arriving at our destination, all of us helped to carry the materials and prizes needed to the hall.

       Firstly, my friends who were in charge of registration and ice-breaking informed all the facilitators about their group names. Each of us was assigned to represent a superhero. Surprisingly, I got Ultraman, who has been missed for ages :P  After that, we were asked to stand in front and hold our group cards high so that students could go to respective facilitator accordingly. The first student I met was a helpful boy named D. D kindly offered to be the card holder as he is taller than me. I was of course more than willing to let him do it, with gratitude. It was always good to see students take charge of their own learning even if it’s just a simple gesture. It’s like instead of giving them fish, the better approach would be letting them to touch the fishing net, giving them chances to slowly figure out how to catch fish, and at best, develop a liking for fishing at the end of the day. Opps I think I have gone too far xD 

Going back to the square one, having gathered all the superhero apprentice, we proceeded with ice-breaking activities. To be frank, I am not a person who is good at creating warm conversations with strangers. But I had this sense of mission to talk to them and get them talk because if the facilitator didn’t do it, who else will? Thus, I tried my best to bring up relevant topics that they are familiar with and would be able to respond to, such as school lives, hobbies and even favorite hang-out places in JB. The students were still quite shy, but at least they did talk a bit in English.

We then worked together on our group logo and cheers. I didn’t help the students much with the logo design because I think it’s better not to restrain their very own aesthetical creativity, at the precious age of 13. So they drew an Ultraman head and some cute-looking monsters around the Ultraman collaboratively. As for group cheer, they didn’t have enough confidence and related experience (perhaps) to come up with one. I didn’t blame them because I reckoned 13-year-old me probably can’t think of one also. I coached them a bit regarding what a group cheer is and taught them one that consists of rhythm and simple adjectives. Hopefully by the next time they join another language camp, they would have been equipped with better ideas on how to construct a group cheer on their own.

Right after breakfast, we had our first game which was Charade. I combined with the group sitting next to mine. My students were rather shy to speak out the answers loud at first, but they got better and more engaged gradually. Speaking about vocabulary acquisition of this game, the words used were mostly what they already know thus it didn’t contribute to this point. However, they did learn some mispronounced words. At the same time, this game was a baby step for them to be brave in expressing themselves and voicing out their thoughts. Sometimes a language camp isn’t just all about English, the inculcation of generic skills is an important part too. The same held true to the second game, Win, Lose or Draw. I personally had a whole lot of fun watching their lovely drawings and the humorous contrasts between pictures and their real meanings. Seeing the cheerful faces shown by the students, I believed they felt the same way.

The third game was Tandem Writing. I felt so touched to see a student who wouldn’t stop writing even when time was up (and she told me that Tandem Writing is her favourite game at the end of the language camp). That’s the spirit ! She has been a strong proof of how Tandem Writing can trigger students’ interest and motivate them to write with ego-involvement. She really tried to write as long as she can in a logical and meaningful manner. Although there were grammatical mistakes, I am always convinced that writing at young age without fearing mistakes is the best experimental platform for one to learn and improve by leaps and bounds over time, for this was my own learning experience. Apart from that particular inspiring student, the rest performed quite well too. Their stories were all coherent and interesting. But it was an unfortunate thing that I didn’t have adequate time to go through the language parts of their stories in details. What I could manage was only to re-read their stories in a grammatical manner (without telling what’s wrong explicitly)with hope that they could realize some of their mistakes.

Following that, we had to choose the best story from Tandem Writing section and acted it out. I helped the students with role-delegation as it was required that all the group members must be involved. Then, they started creating their props. I suggested them to build a grave with mahjong paper (my group was under ghost story) because I think that would be the opportunity to give some language input (as in normally what is written on a grave?).At first they tried to write themselves, I corrected them afterwards. Having done the props, we began the rehearsal. I facilitated them quite a lot at this phase to teach them what to say and how to say it correctly and with suitable intonation. When time was up, we were formed into three zones according to theme and kicked start the drama competition. My students’ voice were still too soft to be heard even though I had reminded them repeatedly that they need to speak louder. I guess this is my weakness as a facilitator, I couldn’t make them comfortable with the entire situation that they were nervous to speak out.

All in all, it has been a golden experience to be involved in Language Camp B. It has made me reflect quite a lot on my past experience as a student, as in how I used to hope my teacher to be and what are the things that I wish to get from the teacher (compliments, patient guidance, smiles, some cheering jokes, etc). I am really passionate about helping students with their language development , but I need to improve more on the teacher-student interaction part.