Teach Abroad Blog

Largely thanks to the position of English as the world’s second language, here in the UK we can sometimes become a little complacent about learning second languages. After all, if everywhere you go the chances of someone speaking English is fairly high, there is rarely that much of an incentive.

However, by overlooking the need for further language skills, we could be missing out on the potential benefits of language skills. This is especially true of our children, as it has been proved that learning a second language in developing years has many long-term cognitive benefits.

I came to Shanghai, China in 2011 to teach English and since then, there hasn’t been a dull moment. From all of my experiences, my trip to Guilin is one of my favorite experiences. While in this area, I went with some friends to visit Dragon’s Backbone rice terraces. We had a hotel reserved in the Dazhai area of the terraces, so we took a bus to Dazhai from Guilin. On the way up, there was so much rainfall that it caused a mud slide, which caused the road to become completely blocked by all the dirt. It was a little difficult to figure out what was happening since the bus driver only spoke Chinese, but it turned out that we needed to walk over the land side where another bus driver would come and pick us up. When we finally arrived at the terraces, we were completely lost. From the point where the bus dropped off to our hotel, it ended up being about a 2 ½ hour trek up and down the terraces to get there. I guess it was just lucky that two of us were carrying backpacks. Our friend without a backpack had one of the Chinese sherpas take her bag to our hotel for only 40 RMB.

Among the four language skills (Reading, Listening, Speaking, Writing), teaching—as well as teaching—writing is the most difficult. This is because when students write, they are asked to express their own ideas. Rather than relying on their memory, they now have to tap into their creativity. This can be especially problematic if you teach in a country like China, where public education focuses primarily on memorization and regurgitation. Try to use the following two activities to give kids the confidence to write.