Teach English in Tongyu Zhen - Yancheng Shi

Education systems were meant to supply HR needs with doctors, employees, teachers, and engineers in old model of economy (industrial). The third wave has changed almost everything and according to unconfirmed statics more than 300 million jobs between 2025-2030 won't exist anymore. Accordingly we need to adjust, or there will be huge gap between majority and new era. A need analysis to reform approaches and design new programs/courses that fits into this digital high-stimulating world. Learning in youngsters happens faster as their brains produce more synapses. Thinking patterns change as we start to use a new language, and teachers may want to use this window of opportunity to maximize their impact on students. They need to be compatible with their brain's functionality. Intellectual students do tremendously better than others. Vital skills are: problem solving, critical thinking, cognitive skills. Cognitive skills are the core skills your brain uses to think, read, learn, remember, reason, and pay attention. Working together, they take incoming information and process it. There are 8 of them: sustained attention, selective attention, divided attention, long-term memory, working memory, logic and reasoning, auditory processing and visual processing. They are involved in processing concepts across all academic disciplines, understanding and quickly grasping what is read and heard, gaining insight, logical reasoning, seeing connections between ideas, cause and effect processing, and mathematical reasoning. In fact, most learning struggles are caused by one or more weak cognitive skills. Neuroplasticity trains the cognitive skills the brain use to think and learn. It offers the prospect of new ways to improve learning and education, physical rehabilitation, mental illnesses and addiction. Targeted Neuroplasticity Training(TNT) focuses on a specific kind of learning—cognitive skills training. The premise is that during optimal times in the training process, precise activation of peripheral nerves through stimulation can boost the release of brain chemicals such as acetylcholine, dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine that promote and strengthen neuronal connections in the brain. The process by which connections between neurons change to improve brain function during learning. Programs like: The Instrumental Enrichment programme, Fast ForWord, Arrowsmith Programme, and also apps like: Lumosity, CogniFit Brain Fitness and Happify are strong examples of using TNT in modern education. Despite lack of cognitive skills, a major cause in students dealing with anxiety, boredom and incapability to learn is lack of a map describing mechanism of mind. Explicitly teaching students about neuroplasticity(how the brain changes during learning)can have a transformative impact in the classroom. These findings have had a positive effect on students' perceptions of their own abilities, which motivate them to take charge of their learning(self-commitment), and leads to further success in academic levels and real life experiences. Nisbett (2009) reports on classroom research involving seventh graders who were taught that learning changes the brain and that intelligence is expandable. Students in this experimental group did better on math tests than peers who did not receive that instruction. A well integrated curriculum will both include mechanisms for understanding how the program contributes to or enhances learning course content, and give some spare time to instructor to play with. No matter how successful (terms of success are different) an approach is, we ought to pay attention to: a- The design of curriculum and material based on EQ. b- Teachers' mental/behavior health. c- Further assessments and interactions: students feedback, workshops, internships. Better to remind students to "drive" their own brains, and teach them useful learning strategies. As TNT focus on short repetitive trainings over a long period of time, we need to come up with tasks that target knowledge and functionality in monthly basis to monitor students capabilities. Goal is students to be able to know how to: - Get into brain machine /make a plan for task. - Subdivide any task and do it step by step. - Gather information they need. - Put into action new material to learn. - Complete the task. I have found "movies criticism workshop" very useful not only to change class' atmosphere and enhance motivation, cognitive skill, critical thinking, morality, team playing and story-telling; but also to target 4 skills, vocabulary and grammar simultaneously. the workshop structure goes like:  Engage: Watching trailer of movie - a concise introduction of characters and theme of story.  Study: Eliciting difficult words - teach how to narrate a story.  Activate: each group of students present a short story of a character in the movie - an individual writing task on how they want ending to be (using new words). p.s: movie would be seen in home, activate phase can happen in next few weeks. cons: It takes time to demonstrate how to do the tasks as this would be a new experience for students to get license to drive their own mind.