1.      Activity focus and purpose:

In order to cooperate with the Bilingual 2030 Policy, this course was specially organized to cultivate EMI TA's capability of classroom management and communicative expression so that under the guidance of EMI teachers, EMI TA would lead students to conduct group discussions to improve the teaching effectiveness of EMI courses.

2.      Activity features and implementation:

(1)        Topic: Classroom Management and Communicative Expression

(2)        Speaker:

Shuping Huang (currently an associate professor in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature, National Sun Yat-sen University)

(3)        Pedagogy: Interactive teaching

(4)        Agenda:

(5)        Content:

a.           Roles of Teaching Assistants:

(a)       Instructional support

(b)       Class management

(c)       Course preparation

(d)       Professional development

(e)       Assessment

b.          Dr. Susan Ambrose’s 7 Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching:

(a)       Prior knowledge can either support or hinder learning.

(b)       How students organize knowledge affects how they learn and apply it.

(c)       Motivation drives and sustains students’ learning efforts.

(d)       Goal-directed practice with targeted feedback improves learning quality.

(e)       Mastery requires acquiring skills, practicing integration, and knowing when to apply them.

(f)        Students’ development interacts with the course environment, influencing learning.

(g)       To become self-directed, students must learn to monitor and adjust their learning strategies.

c.           Motivation is the key.

(a)       When are students motivated to learn?

(b)       Motivation-boosting strategies:

A.        Maximize the value of the course.

B.         Make the goal attainable.

(A)     Develop your lesson plans

(B)      Design and use rubrics

(C)      Low-stake assessments:

I.            Quizzes

II.         In-class exercises

III.      Group discussion

Ø   Common problems:

                                                                                                                                           i.          Give no warning

                                                                                                                                         ii.         Ask ineffective questions

                                                                                                                                      iii.          Rush to judge

                                                                                                                                       iv.          Dominate the discussion

IV.      Drafts

V.        Instant response tools (Kahoot, Slido, Socrative, etc.)

VI.      Self-directed study

(c)       Care about students

d.          Feedback giving strategies:

(a)       Be goal-oriented

(b)       Be formative (not summative)

(c)       Be balanced, but start with the positive

(d)       Be constructive and actionable

(e)       Be clear and direct

e.           Extra challenge for EMI: The language barrier

(a)       Use “spoken language”.

(b)       Use your voice to convey.

A.        Stress

B.         Pauses

C.         Speed up/slow down

D.        Louder/quieter

(c)       Use gestures to help.

(d)       Utilize multimodal materials.

f.            Other resources:

(a)       AI-assisted material development:

A.        Texts: ChatGPT, Gemini, consensus

B.         Photos/illustrations: image generator, Krea AI, DALL-E

C.         Video clips: CapCut VideoGPT, Haiper

D.        Graph: Napkin, Julius

E.         Audios: TTSMAKER, Speechify Studio, AI STUIOS

F.          Lesson plans: Roshi, Mr. Ranedeer, Lesson Plan Generator

(b)       Teaching theories and practices:

A.        Assistants Handbook

B.         Assess Teaching and Learning

C.         Teaching Guides

D.        Student Motivation

(c)       EMI-related sources

(6)        Satisfaction survey: 95%

3.      Activity Highlights

Figure 1: Lecture

Figure 2: Lecture

Figure 3: Teacher-Student Interaction

Figure 4: Student- Student Interaction