<p> At 3 o’ clock on May 14th, a seminar which centers on the 2020 Citywide High School English Quality Test as well as Efficient College Entrance Examination Preparation in the remaining two months was held in Tang Lai Hui Ethnic Middle School, a well-established high school situated at the bank of the renowned Tang Lai Canal. The seminar gathered together Senior Three English teachers coming from different schools in Yin Chuan, all for one aim: how to have our students well prepared for Gao Kao. Cao Tianxiang, an instructor and researcher of the Educational Research Institute in Yin Chuan, was in charge of the seminar. Meanwhile, he himself together with He Aijun, and Jiang Wanyun, two outstanding teachers who are especially experienced in senior three teaching, respectively conducted a lecture concerning revision strategies of Gao kao. Featuring in-depth thinking, scientific analyses, thorough induction and open-minded reflections, their lectures enlightened each attendee’s mind and offered many valuable suggestions easy to operate. </p> <p>After everybody was seated, Mr. Cao first walked on the lecture stage and greeted everyone with his usual steady and graceful voice. As a member of examiners committee for several years, he started his lecture by sharing the experiences and heartfelt feelings he had accumulated all these years in a very modest and practical way. Being a examiner is always a demanding job which requires not only meticulosity but also a strong sense of responsibility as well as an observant eye or an acute insight for the trend of exams. Anyone who desires to be up to the challenge has to be well informed of and well equipped with data related to students’ academic performances collected both in the past and in the time being. And that’s what Mr Cao is championing for. Utilizing abundant real-time data and convincing examples, Mr Cao made concepts and principles which could have been abstract easy to penetrate and digest. Living in the time of big data, he perfectly exemplified the benefits and convenience that big data has brought to us. And for anyone who works in the front line of the teaching career, we all should follow suit and make full use of big data, letting the facts talk and guide. </p> <p>Besides presenting the feedback reflected from this English quality test, Mr Cao also made it a point to share some useful revision strategies specifically intended for the remaining days ahead of the College Entrance Examination. For instance, he believes analyzing test papers in a scientific way and promoting classroom teaching by means of examination is never out of fashion. Only by proper testing can we have a general and concrete idea of the efficiency of our teaching as well as student’s learning. In the meanwhile, frequent testing without proper analyzing should be avoided. Instead, testing and analyzing should always go hand in hand. Also, fixing our attention and energy on students’ learning condition is also of vital importance, since students are the center of the learning as well as the teaching process, without getting a firm hold of students’ learning condition, we may find it very hard to have our best strategies and methods implemented. Furthermore, one tree does not make a forest. Any divided or unorganized efforts will be heavily discounted. So Mr cao stressed that cooperation among team members must be strengthened. Each member of the teaching group should be well aware of his or her responsibility or assignment and every member should think and act in the same direction and lend their helping hand when most needed. In a word, success takes its root in team spirit and cooperation.</p> <p>Jiang Wanyun, a championing teacher who has won many prizes in different competitions designed for English teachers was the second to engage our full attention. He comes from NO. 24 Middle School which has been quickly gaining its popularity and trust among students and parents in recent years. The way he spoke kept me wondering, “ Will a man as gentle as him ever get mad and lose his temper with his students? Will he ever scold or criticize?” Anyway, first impression may not do justice to one’s overall personality, but it is hard to ignore. </p> <p>Mr. Jiang’s lecture mainly ed on reading including reading comprehension, cloze test and task-based reading comprehension. He holds the idea that Gao Kao is a subject of science, which follows a certain kind of law. In order to assist our students to excel in this life-changing exam, we have to first make sure we have a good understanding of it, like what genres of articles are usually chosen for cloze test, what types of questions are usually placed in reading comprehension, how to extract the topic sentence or the main idea of an article, and what are the hidden patterns behind each piece of prof-reading? To be on top of the laws that govern each piece of test paper is an indispensable quality that every Senior Three teacher is expected to have. Following the general introduction came his specific analysis, teaching suggestions and possible solutions with regard to reading comprehension, cloze test and task-based reading comprehension. Take reading comprehension for example, he pointed out that there still existed many serious problems in the way we teach reading, such as turning a reading class into a translating or vocabulary explaining class, which robs students of their time and opportunity to do independent reading practice and form their own way of thinking. Besides, the tasks or exercises that designed for reading classes are more often than not either too superficial or lack of ability graduation, which in turn can only demonstrate a very shallow lever of students’ mastery of certain passages or articles. Briefly speaking, some of our reading classes still have a long way to go to achieve efficiency and be of any help to students’ improvement. Thus, Mr Jiang appealed to all of us to teach smart instead of teaching hard, simply put, dedicate our time to thinking of smart and effective ways to help students improve rather than exhaust our precious time and energy in repeating the same kind of low-efficiency class day after day, year after year. </p> <p>Although to grasp all this information and have its core spirit and main messages reflected in our teaching still needs some preparation and processing, yet no goal is out of reach as long as the direction is right. </p> <p>As the group leader of our school’s Senior Three English teaching and research group, Mr He ( He Aijun) was arranged to give his lecture at last. He gave his full attention to writing which consisted of two parts：the assessment and analysis of students’ writing in this Citywide Quality Test and how to compose a good writing that is up to the standard of Gao Kao. For the first part, Mr. He emphasized the importance of examining the topic. An accurate understanding of the topic as well as its content and tense is the first priority when it comes to writing. Although the ability to make error-free sentences and a coherent article is equally important, yet,without a correct understanding of the topic, everything else will be for nothing. It is a great pity that quite a number of students have neglected this aspect, thus reducing themselves into the position of misreading the topic. Consequently, regardless of how good their sentences are, the grades for their writing will be rather low, not higher than the fourth level. </p> <p>In addition to the importance of examining the topic, Mr. He next made a presentation of the standard of writing uation. Although most of us are well aware of it, yet only a few could tell the distinction between the fourth level and the fifth level. And that’s where Mr. He put his stress on. He even took one step further by applying many screenshots of students’ writing to his presentation in order to make the distinction easier to been seen. And according to my understanding, the biggest difference between the fourth level of writing and the fifth level mainly lies in the richness of vocabulary and sentence structures. In the second part of the lecture, Mr. He fixed his attention on the making of a good composition, or more exactly, how to compose a good writing. A piece of good writing is never the result of a writer’s casualness or mindlessness. It is a combination of careful planning, attentive writing as well as patient checking. And there are many aspects that students need to be conscious of in order to forge a composition which is desirable for examiners, such as the addition of superior structures like clauses, non-predictive verbs and independent genitive structures; the addition of transitional words to make the writing more coherent and organized; and the necessity of a good ending. Apart from the addition which works to make the writing richer and readable, there are also some easily-made mistakes which call students’ special attention. I will not list the mistakes here one by one, but they can be classified according to the part of speech, like noun, adjectives, adverbs,etc. </p> <p>As the seminar came to the end, Mr. He concluded his lecture by quoting a Seven-Word Formula from Mr. Cao, which is Clear ( paragraphs should be clear), complete( all of the key points should be covered), enough( the number of words should be within the range of the requirement), few( the mistakes should be as few as possible), many( the sentence structures should be diversified), beautiful(the handwriting as well as the face of the writing should be neat and pleasing to the eye), and good( the transition of sentences are natural and fluent). From my personal view, this formula is a simply a stroke of genius. It will surly be of great benefit to anyone who is keen on having their writing ability improved if properly used.</p><p> The seminar lasted for 3 hours. It may be short in comparison with the length of time, but it will surely leave a mark on those who have attended it. May this mark take its root in our hearts and grow into a big tree which bears successful fruit.</p>