Where are you from?

It is my belief that the purpose of learning the English language cannot be fully understood without seeing it as a tool for global communication. In an attempt to let my students understand that, an online video chat was arranged so that the fourth graders could simultaneously interact with my friend, Ray Yang, who lives in Tokyo, and share their life experiences in English. In a real-life context, the students learn and utilize English for communication. Seeing their active participation and happy faces, I am sure that the seed within us is the need for communication and that it eagerly sprouts leaves under the right conditions.

The first step is to relate the students’ prior knowledge to the new topic by showing them slides of Tokyo, Japan, and change of people’s life due to COVID-19. Then I could introduce Ray to them and discuss how to start, continue, and end a conversation.

The students worked in groups and came up with these questions which they would ask Ray in the video chat.

Some help with their functional language.

Before making the greeting video, we watched a YouTube video and learn the basic greeting in Japanese. On the day before meeting Ray, the students and I made the video together. They were excitedly saying, "How are you? konichiwa ogenkidesuka?" 

During the video chat, to answer the students' questions, Ray talked about his

favorite place in Tokyo and Taiwanese food he liked the best.