A Letter Thank you for your Christmas letter! I am glad to see your grandchildren in the photos. They are so lovely! When you came to Taiwan earlier this year, I happened to travel in the Western United States. I am sorry for not being able to invite you to my home then. I hope I will see you again soon. Lastly, I wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. All the best!

Gifts Exchanging Children are expecting the coming of Christmas so I decide to hold a activity of gifts exchanging in my family. Regarding to the rule of this game, my little daughter preferred to give out the gift randomly instead of knowing the receiver previously. I told her it would be difficult to prepare the gift if we don’t know the gender, the ages and the interest of the receivers—grandparents, parents, and children. She suggested that adults and children change gifts separately. I think it is really a good method to this problem. At least we can have proper size for our family when we buy gloves or clothes for them.

Different Cloudy Days I taught my little daughter to tell the meaning of the chart in the weather forecast website yesterday. There are differences between heavy cloudy and light cloudy days when it comes to the sign of “cloudy”. Darker color clouds mean more chances of raining. On the other hand, Light gray clouds mean more opportunities of sunny days. Today was supposed to be cooler than the days before. However, I only wear short T-shirt at this noon.

An Inspiration from the Disney's Video There are some wonderful moments in this video. We all search the moment of our life. The moments give positive strength to our life. However, we can’t be the spectators who look back our life all the time. “If watching is all you are gonna do, then you will watch your life go by without you.” The video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJn075Aw0CY

Languages exchange about food cooking

Food is a good topic that almost everyone likes. Cuisine is an perfect access to one's culture, too. I hope to have language exchange partners who are interested in making videos about food cooking. Maybe we can share our cultures and learn languages at the same time. 

If it's not convenient for you to cook by yourself, a translation of introduction of your country's cuisine  is fine.

I am not a cuisine expert. Language practicing is the purpose of this invitation.

食物幾乎是每個人都會有興趣的主題，透過食物，我們有機會了解一個地方的文化。我希望能找到對這個主題有興趣的夥伴，也許可以經由自製影片來練習語言，同時也可以互相交換對彼此文化的認識。

我不是美食專家，只是希望我們藉由食物的主題，練習語言表達。

Three Wishes on My Mind I have 3 wishes that are impossible to be fulfilled. First of all, I want to become a cat. If I were a cat, I could run rapidly, jump highly, act swiftly, and sleep all day long. Second, I want to be happy forever. The scientists have proved that one’s health is affected by her mood. I think both happiness and health are very important. Last, I hope I could go back to my childhood. I realized how happy I was when I was an elementary school student. Although they are unlikely to happen in real world, I truly hope the miracle could happen to me.

Honeybees Honeybees can be divided into 3 groups according to their works. Worker bees are the busy bees; queen bees are the mother bees and the drones are what we called “lazybees” whoso only one responsibility is to help the queen bee have babies. All the honeybees live in the hexagonal honeycomb cells. Via the shape the hexagon, they don’t have gaps between cells and have more space for their rooms. There are lots of sweet uses of honey: they can stop cough, help wounds heal, and improve your appearance. Unfortunately, the bees are disappearing gradually. Even though bees are very important, some farmers still use the poison to kill them.

Please give me advices if I didn't write correctly. Taiwan is famous for all kinds of delicious foods. Take salty ones for example, we have braised beef noodles, minced pork rices, Gua Bao, oyster omelet, stinky tofu…etc; sweet desserts, such as pineapple cakes, bubble milk teas, and shaved ice with mangoes are world-renowned. In the beginning of this semester, we learned some sentence patterns about our preference for foods and tried to apply them into writing. Here are our audio and video works. Emily likes matcha recipes(link), and Kuku likes waffles(link). Jethro enjoys french fries in McDonald(link) and Nina is into milk tea(link). Talking about food, what’s your favorite?

Summaries of My English Course Here are some summaries of this course. Principles in teaching, especially in learning languages: A) Expose students to the language they are learning. B) Arrange positive learning experience for students. C) Challenge students to think critically. Provide BTQ (Beyond the Text Questions) instead of BCQ (Basic Comprehension Questions) will initiate more interaction among peers. Cloze tests with acceptable words rather than exact words are suitable for discussion. The principle (B) is carried out by some strategies as followed: Team activity: Students cooperate and learn from each other in a team competing activity. Balance the opportunity of winning for each team by changing team members, giving some hints or maximizing the scores of the final quiz. That will maintain students' learning motivation. Judicious use of scoring systems: Tests may make students anxious and frustrated instead of accomplishment. Make scoring systems a method to enhance students’ self-awareness and confidence. Scaffolding based on students’ background schemata: All the materials can be learned no matter how difficult they are as long as teachers scaffold them on the base of students’ experience or knowledge. Besides, proper scaffolding can also activate students’ motivation. Gamifying the process of learning: Only in relaxing atmosphere students participate the activities actively. The gamified arrangement can be in pre-tests, main tasks, and post-tests. It’s the interesting learning process that makes an effective instruction.