Journal 3
July 11, 2007

Kennedy Center
Alison introduced us to see Shear Madness at Kennedy Center. I thought I should dress up for the show. After all, I was going to Kennedy Center. To my surprise, some people just wore their short pants and slippers. Most of the people came to see the show with their family. In Taiwan, it is not a common scene to see the whole family to go to the theater.
Shear Madness is a crazy suspending story which happened in a modern hair salon. The barber couldn’t focus on his job, and he was always keeping chatting with his colleague, Barbara. He almost drove his customers crazy. Suddenly, there was a murder upstairs. The woman upstairs was killed and everyone in the salon got involved in the event. The detective had to find out the murderer. The most attractive part is that the audience could participate in the plot and give their opinions to the actors. The interaction between the actors and the audience got our attention. The actors encouraged the audience to try to figure out the clues and guessed who the killer was. Even a little girl from the audience was not afraid to express her opinions and discussed the plot with the actors on the stage.
The little girl in Kennedy Center made me reflect about my teaching. What can I do to encourage my students to talk with each other in English without anxiety? What kind of education made a little girl talk loudly in public and speak out her ideas without fear? The class discussed the communicative language learning. I enjoyed the discussion because Ginny gave us a comfortable learning environment. Group work also made me feel less anxious. I listened to the opinions of my group members and shared my ideas with examples or practical evidence. However, in my English class in Taiwan, I didn’t give my students enough time to communicate in English with their classmates. For most of the time, I hurried to finish my teaching materials. As a result, the students kept silent all the time and lost the chance to practice English in class.