This week we had a class taught by Tang Ying (Rose). She taught us how to use visual imagery (形象法) to learn new words and read better. It is a very good way to memorize new words and understand passages. Before this lesson, I learned words by writing, reading them aloud and spelling words repeatedly. However, I found I would forget almost everything a little while later. Therefore, I don’t particularly like to recite the text and memorize words. I liked Rose’s class. The method she taught us was very good. First, she gave us a sentence and asked us to discuss how to learn it easily without forgetting in groups of four students. This way, we shared our strategies. Later, she told us to evaluate our strategies to see whose strategy was the best. After that, she showed us her strategy, which was to imagine a situation and a story to learn the sentence. She first showed the Chinese story and asked us to translate it into English. We did it. Then she taught us how to memorize the text by using visual imagery. Finally, she held a competition to see who could memorize the most in three minutes. We recited the story easily and quickly. We felt excited! How happy we were! After that, she taught us how to read a passage by using visual imagery. This is thinking of pictures of the situations in your mind while reading a passage, which helped us understand the passage easily and read it much more quickly. If we put words into pictures, it is easier to learn them. I like this method and agree with Rose. |