CDE had been
a fruitful and enjoyable course I had undertaken in my secondary three year. From
the course last year, I gained a lot of knowledge about differences of Chinese
and Western societies, especially the functioning of several reputed companies
such as Lenovo, Apple, and Google which indented a deep impression in me. I
learnt about the importance of innovation, and the importance of great
leadership, and plenty other interesting facts. Secondary 3 CDE definitely had
been an enriching course, and to my delight, for this second semester of IHE in
secondary four of HCI, CDE is back!
With the
course basing itself very much on students’ self-initiated research and the
sharing of their findings with the class, CDE was definitely an interactive
course in which students have the opportunity to practice their speaking and
listening skills, and hone their critical thinking ability, especially in the Q&A
sessions of the graded individual presentations. For this short time of 5
minutes, students had to do a lot of background research and back themselves up
with plenty of knowledge regarding the topic they have chosen in order to
survive the relentless and sometimes difficult questions which the audience
posed for him. What makes it more even daunting is that our CDE teacher would
be standing at the side or back of the class, looking upon the whole scene and
silently grading you based on your 5 minutes of speaking. Hence, I have always
felt apprehensive for the coming of this session last year for fear that I
might stumble during the presentation or get struck dumb by a critical question
asked by my classmates, as I am definitely not the eloquent and quick-witted
kind of person. But luckily I got passed it smoothly last year. Yet, this year,
CDE syllabus still has the 5 minutes of presentation in place, and again, I
feel that tingling apprehension for the coming of this presentation…
Another
component of students’ grade is the research paper. This is definitely the
section that depends a lot on the effort and hard work and time that students are
willing to invest. To me, writing research papers are never easy; it requires a
lot of determination especially for the beginning when one is still trying to
formulate the structure of the essay and what to talk about. In the start, it
seems like starting from scratch of some insurmountable task, but slowly and
slowly, you would pick up the momentum, and as you approach the end of your
essay, you would feel an indescribable sense of delight and satisfaction! But
the starting of the research paper is always a difficult and imposing task – it
is similar to searching for light in the vast darkness. And since I have not
started composing my research paper this year, I am feeling rather apprehensive
(again), as I am not sure when I would be able to find the correct direction,
and how much precious time I would be able to take in order to complete this
task. In especial, being in the third term of secondary four, every subject
teacher is pressing hard and trying to extract the most out of us, hence with
another research paper to write is simply stressful for me!
Yet, to my
relief, CDE still has another mode of assessment, which is the journal writing that
I am currently doing. This is the enjoyable task that I most like to do, as it not
only gives you the opportunity to write with simply and effective language,
allows you to express your thoughts, it is also a good way to heighten our
level of command for English Language. It does not take up too much time, and it
is not too much of a burden to our already heavy workload, hence serving as a
sort of safety net which ensures that all of us would attain a minimal grade
for CDE!
Though CDE
had been a pretty successful course last year, I still feel that there are some
areas for improvement, and I hope that my expectations would be met! For one, I
hope that the presentations would be conducted with a greater amount of control
exerted over the students. From my past experiences, the presentations had been
pretty rowdy; if not, students were not listening to the presenters and hence would
not benefit from the course, since the presentations are one of the main
components of the whole course. I also hope that perhaps Mr Karplus could make
a simple summary and provide an add-on to what is not mentioned by the
presenters, so that the whole session would end up with a better conclusion. This
is especially important as many a times I could not catch what the presenters
are saying (even though mindmaps are drawn on the whiteboard) as some of them
speak too fast for me to catch. Another suggestion is that more educational and
informative videos could be shown to the class, as this is what that snatches
the students’ attention and makes lessons more lively and vibrant. Of course,
these are just suggestions, and finally I also wish that the light-hearted and
less intense atmosphere during CDE lessons could be maintained!
That’s all I
would write for today!
