Today I observed an English conversation Club offered by Language Learning Centre at TRU. Unfortunately, there are only our TESL classmates to join with it, but we indeed learned some good teaching skills from Hilda, our teacher who leads the English Conversation Club. In the beginning, Hilda created us a warm and friendly learning environment. At first, she introduced herself utilizing displaying three sentences about her interesting and engrossing information in slides and asking us to find out one truth and two lies. She gave us clear instructions that we are allowed to ask her any questions.

I agree that this is a good and efficient way to shorten the distance with our students. If they have a basic understanding of us, they are more relaxed and comfortable to talk more about themselves. Students can also introduce themselves to others in the class and get along with their classmates. The class atmosphere is relaxing and fun, which immensely helps students to fit into a new and unfamiliar environment. After that, Hilda divided us into breakout rooms to discuss what three common things we have in a group. It was very enjoyable to get to know our classmates more, and I felt that we get more closer after group work. We are willing to speak out and share with the whole class.

What I feel most is that everyone in the conversation club is pretty chill. I suppose that building a warm and friendly environment was super successful. What I want to take away is a warm up activity called two lies and one truth, which is quite practical and suitable for first-class to get along with students well. We need to provide a chance to let students truly know us and trust us.