Conversation VS Presentation

侯克為

It is always said that a good teacher should be a good lecturer.He or she should at least master all the different methods of presenting a good presentation to students.We expect our teachers to give a wonderful lecture in class and thats everything a successful teacher should do.However， is this truly right？ Does it really make sense that a teacher should be a lecturer and treat our students as audiences in class？

No， I dont think so.Especially after all these years of teaching primary and middle school students， I think a successful teacher should be a good talker.They should always know how to have a successful conversation with students and exchange information between one another.Yes， the most important part is exchanging， not conveying.

Admittedly， presentation， as one the oldest ways of teaching and presenting your class， it has countless advantages and we benefit so much from it.We put all the information we want to convey to our students on several pages of PowerPoint and try our best to make our PowerPoint a good one.We basically equal information to a good class.There are so many websites teaching you how to make a successful PowerPoint and sometimes you can even buy some best-seller books to learn to make a so-called successful PowerPoint.However， are we really doing the right thing here？ If teaching is always all about PowerPoint， why cant an IT worker or simply a programmer be a successful teacher because he would probably be the person who knows the most about software since PPT is one of them？ I have been to so many classes taught by so many different teachers.Some of the classes may be a failure simply because the teacher is doing too well when it comes to being a good lecturer.Once I was in a class and the teacher was talking for the whole 45 minutes without giving students even one break！ Honestly， he was a very good lecturer by using different tones and coming up with a lot of details.His points are very clear and his examples are persuasive as well.However， he never interacted with any students， no words between teacher and students， no eye contacts， no questions or even any little activities or games in class！ Students are not paying attention to their teacher.Some of them were actually sleeping， some of them were playing with their pens and erasers and some of them were playing with their classmates.All the students are all very young and have a short span of concentration and attention.Thus If you choose to be a lecturer to your students in your class， you may end up having a lecture instead of a class， which is the worst case scenario for us teachers.

Imagine you are asked to attend to a lecture that you are actually not really interested in.Will you really try your best to keep up with the speaker and never lose your attention？ I highly doubt that.Adults can never really manage to do so， how can our children be able to？ A class with only presentation is not a class.It is boring， low efficient， and its destined to be a failed class.Then what do we need to do if we want to have a successful class？ Conversation may be the answer.I have been through a great training session one year ago in a very successful education company in Beijing.During the training session， our trainer was giving a very though-provoking class to us.I can still remember that class when our trainer asked us not to do anything but raise questions.Based on the trainer s training sessions， we cannot convey information to each other but raise questions and force our training partners to get the ideas by thinking about the questions we give to them.For example， if I want to teach my students about writing easy sentences， and I want all of my students to be aware of the sentence structure， instead of telling them directly all the information I want， I would ask them several questions.Such as， “ Is this sentence complete if we dont have a subject？” “ Is this sentence complete if we dont have a verb？” Generally， people find it more interesting to listen to this class and they can feel like being part of the class.This is obviously the most important idea and the most essential idea that all the teachers should know.By creating conversations between teachers and students， we can create a direct link between teachers and students.The connections between teachers and students make all kinds of classes interesting and efficient.Students will never feel bored in your class and they will always pay attention to you.When you try your best to teach someone something， especially something they dont know， people always find it hard to learn new things in several seconds.If we are talking about Math， Chemistry or physics which are relatively more difficult and requires more time and energy from students， they will simply give up if they cannot really understand things in your class.We want to give lectures all the time and students cannot learn or understand the subjects discussed about， and thats probably one of the reasons why our students always cannot do well in Science subjects.

Whats more， teaching is never all about information.As teachers， we should do a lot more than just giving our students information and knowledge.What matters is that we are trying our best to make sure that our students have learnt how do deal with problems from us.Problems keep changing all the time， so does our knowledge.If our students get used to getting new knowledge， reciting everything and getting a high mark， they probably already lost the meaning of learning at the first step.What do our students need？ They need to know the methods to deal with new problems and they need to know how to think instead of knowing what is the answer for every single different question.

All in all， conversation plays an extremely important role in teaching and teachers should realize that their roles are never lecturers but talkers at this moment.Last question in this essay， if we consider this essay as a demo class， will you regard is as a lecture or a conversation？ I guess your answers proves everything.