Auld Lang Syne lyrics and the movie exerpt

The following is the lyrics of Auld Lang Syne by Robert Burns and the exerpt from the movie Sex and the City where the poem is wonderfully depicted in a song before the New Year. This is one of my favorite songs and I hope to share this feeling with all of my dear friends.

Auld Lang Syne

　Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
　　And never brought to mind?
　　Should auld acquaintance be forgot
　　And days of auld lang syne?
　　For auld lang syne, my dear,
　　For auld lang syne,
　　We'll take a cup o' kindness yet
　　For auld lang syne.
　　

　　We twa hae run aboot the braes
　　And pou'd the gowans fine;
　　We've wander'd mony a weary foot
　　Sin' auld lang syne.
　　We two hae paidled i' the burn,
　　Frae mornin' sun till dine;
　　But seas between us braid hae roar'd
　　Sin' auld lang syne.
　　And here's a hand, my trusty friend,
　　And gie's a hand o' thine;
　　We'll take a cup o' kindness yet

　　Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
　　And never brought to mind?
　　Should auld acquaintance be forgot
　　And days of auld lang syne?
　　For auld lang syne, my dear,
　　For auld lang syne,
　　We'll take a cup o' kindness yet
　　For auld lang syne.
　　For auld lang syne, my dear,
　　For auld lang syne,
　　We'll take a cup o' kindness yet
　　For auld lang syne.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_YnmHLynRY&feature=related

Auld lang syne

Tommorrow would be the last day at Penn State.

How I wish I could stay a little longer, though I know I miss home and baby daughter badly.

We all have experienced so many getting-togethers and leavings, but each time when we have to say farewell, it hurts.

Auld lang syne, my dear Penn State.
Auld lang syne, my dear Chinese friends here in University Park.
Auld lang syne, my dear instructors and friends, Ann, Jim, Gena, Nikki, Michelle, and Linda.

I will remember the warmth in Nittany apartment.
I will remember the calm on Campus, especially the awesome dignity in front of the Old Main.
I will remember the proud history of Nittany lion.
I will remember everything I have experienced here in the short three weeks.
I will remember all this in my mind, for ever.

Let us cherish every opportunity we meet together.
Let us cherish every moment when we feel the touch deep in heart.

Hi everyone, I posted a new episode to my podcast, aliceguohys Podcast. Please click the link below to view it. http://hongyan-guo.podomatic.com/entry/2010-08-12T09_12_06-07_00 See you there! - aliceguohy

Ideas of using wiki in my advanced reading class

I've also got an idea of using wiki in my reading class. Here it is.

I do believe writing response to reading materials would definitely promote students' critical reading and thinking ability, which is one the goals in my advanced reading classroom. Therefore, I asked my students to use portfolio to collect their response to various topics covered in our reading before. But now I think wiki could be a more effective tool to finish this task.

We usually have a lot of contradictory topics in our reading, for example, whether gifted children should be grouped for education. In such case, students could explain thier critical opinions on our classroom wiki. I could start a topic by giving the two options for this issue and ask students to choose a side to continue their response. Besides, wiki could be even more interesting for fiction response. For instance, we read a story named The Lady, or the Tiger? and students always had wonderful ideas to continue the open ending of this story. If we could finish this on wiki next time, their works would be even more valued, and theirs could be exciting modals for the following groups of students in this course.

I gradually realize that technologies is not always big and far-aways things in our classrooms, and as our current conditions are limited, we could carry out fascinating ideas using technologies appropriately in and after our own class.

Using Wiki to create a teacher community

There are ten suggested ways of using wiki in language teaching mentioned in the paper Nikki assigned us the other day. As we discussed them yesterday, I found sharing lesson plans on wiki particularly interesting to me. I have applied a project titled Creating Teacher Community to Promote Young English Teachers' Professional Development, and as the classroom discussion went on, I suddenly realized what an effective tool wiki could be that I could take advantage of to carry out a teacher community!

I kept on thinking about this topic last night, and I've got two ideas of using wikis in teacher community up till now. The most difficult problem young and inexperienced language teachers face is that they spend too much time working on their individual lesson plans and have too little time for researches. Therefore, wiki can help us solve this two-edged problem.

On the one hand, we could share our lesson plans on wiki. Each teacher in the community would concentrate on one lesson plan in a semester. Other teachers are welcome to make revisions and suggestions to it on wiki. In this way, a lot of time would be saved and I'm sure our lesson plans would be better than those designed by us individually.

On the other hand, we could put forward some research topics through our reflection program on wiki. That is, the community members should collaborate to build up a wiki reflecting our own classrooms and finding theoretical discussions on these issues. Then we could connect our ideas by links and I am picturing a wonderful EFL forum on our wiki in my mind! In this way, we will have a lot of topics for our research and development in our own classrooms, for example, carrying out action research to solve some problems in our own classroom. The following result, no doubt to explain further, would be benefits to our teaching as well as our researching abilities. What's more, we are not diverted from our utmost purpose of helping our students with their language learning.

Individual work is valuable, but it is far from enough. Only through collaborative work and enlightening sparks can we develop professionaly. I am excited about this idea myself, and if you are also interested in this idea, would you please join me?

Refelctions on chatting in classrooms

I myself has already been familiar with communicative tasks such as information gap, jigsaw, or solving a questions. But to use them on internet thought chatting techniques is still new to me. I truly think this is a fascinating idea to carry out with young adults.

However, it is not easy to realize them in our classroom inCUMTB. First, the resources are not available. Second, the class size is huge. But I think we could start with some of them after class first. It would be a good try for developing their speaking and writing skills. I will try some in the future.

Use of chatting in Nikki's class

Using chatting in classroom as a student here at PSU is really exciting. I guess that is why many young students love chatting and spending all the time on internet.

I chatted with Nancy in Nikki's class. At first, I think Nancy was not familiar with information-gap question and so we had some difficulties in dealing with the yes-no questions. She was trying to help me with a lot of information she knew about the celebrity she pretended to be. That was really helpful in my guessing, but that was also the end of the first turn of guessing because I could easily figure out who she was. Well, for the latter activities, when we negotiated the instructions of the activities first, things got better and better.

When we printed our chattings all together, it was a big file! I really enjoyed the whole process chatting with Nancy.

Communications with Korean teachers

Thank IECP for their kind efforts to arrange the meeting and communications between the Korean teachers and us! We've learned something in common with the education in both of our countries!

I talked with a Korean high school teacher about some problems in English teaching we all face. I guess big size classroom is a big problems for both of us. It is just near impossible to arrange various speaking and listening in class. But of course we should still be trying, though it is step and step further.

Another thing we find in common is research-orientation at universities in both of our countries. I do want to say a little more on this point. I think researches are indeed important for college teachers, but if we emphasize too much on that, I wonder whether it could be beneficial for students. We are called teachers, and that is why I am so obssessively persistent in taking teaching as our basic jobs. I hope university teachers could balance well between teaching and arousing students in their classrooms and carrying out researches and getting promoted!

It is fantastic to communicate with the world in this program.

Visit to Pittsburgh

We went to visit Pittsburgh last Saturday, and the impression I got about it was its steel and iron. We could see it through the bridges, which are all made of solid steel and iron. I love the rivers, with a lot people enjoying their sailing on them. I love American styles of getting relaxed and refreshed at weekends. It is more this way at State college. The first Sunday we arrived here was kind of surprising to us. We went shopping late in the afternoon and ended up with only a few of the shops opening. We can't see a lot of people except young adults dating their friends downtown. We were wondering where all the towns people went for their weekends. But it is really nice to stay with the family and enjoy the get-togethers. Oh, I miss my family, too!

What I don't like about Pitt. was its traffic jam! It seems that it would appear in bigger cities, always.

It was still of a lot of fun to know more about Penn. state, and America!

comments on technology use in U.S.A

I was sort of reassured after reading all the statistics about technology use in the U. S. higher education.

Before reading the article, I was expecting a more frequent and various use of technologies in the U. S. There are so many advanced labs at Penn. State University and Nikki has mentioned so many different kinds of technology terms that I have never or seldom heard of before. All this has led me to the conclusion that technologies are widely used at American universities now. The statistics show that similiar to the situation at Chinese higher education, only "convenient" technologies are used frequently, such as ppt. and various websites on the internet. Things like wiki and podcast are still new things for many American teachers. So this reassured me that I am not that far behind the up-to-date technologies and their usages in classrooms.

I still hold a somewhat doubtful attitude towards technology use in teaching now. I think technologies cannot take the place of teachers in teaching and learning, but I am afraid that they could some time in the future. But the statistics from the study reassured me in my own beliefs. My belief that technologies would only be helpful for ESL or EFL when it is appropriately used, which means they should be adapted to particular contexts and the teacher would be the one who is responsible for knowing his or her own students well and deciding how much technology should be used.

thoughts on using technology in class

Nobody could deny the fact that we are already in an information age, and so it is inevitable that technology is more and more widely used in classroom teaching these days. But to tell the truth, I am not the one that welcomes a variety of technologies in my class. On the one hand, I am not very interested in technology and thus good at it myself. On the other hand, I didn't get a lot of positive results from trying to promote some technology use for my students.

I'd like to say more about the second factor. I've been teaching Advanced Reading to juniors majoring in English in China University of Mining and Technology, Beijing for five years. I originally asked them to give presentations for the reading materials we covered in classes. They did this in groups. What I got from their feedback was that they did get some useful information from searching the internet for background information of the authors and the texts, but they spent too much time for selecting from all the resources. Many of them agreed that the process of preparing for presentations was more like that of learning about ppt. skills. But wait a minute, I'm not the teacher responsible for teaching computer skills, and they were going to have classes on that subject. Besides, as I had observed, they were less capable of thinking deep and critically than I had expected them to become by attending my classes. I actually hoped them to learn to think critically on the reading materials, reflect their own life and thus form their future goals in life. Then, inserting too much technology did not really work well with my intentions of teaching and learning.

I did not drop all the technologies, though. I still give the presentation assignments. But now I don't emphasize on technologies. I try to activate my students' background information on a particular text first and then encourage them to linger in the pieces of reading and give the class their own understandings during the presentation period. PPT is not required as a necessary part any more.

In a word, I do think there is no way to escape the technologies in classroom teaching, but we should be very cautious not to get obssessed in and overuse it.

PSU first impressions

The sky is really blue and beautiful!

It is really exciting to meet so many nice people.

Everyone follows the transportation disciplines well.

I also like the sound of the churches here, which makes people so calm.

Everything co-exists in harmony, the students, the buildings, the trees, the squirrels, the ducks, and even the rabbits.

I am sure that we will have fantastic days here!