Page 136 - 羅富國校友會（七十五周年紀念特刊）

感恩與迴響

✽海外來鴻（美國加州）

An Enriching Journey to the West

Cheung Sik Lee Dennig（1975 NCE Alumna）

Hello, everyone! My name is Sik Lee Dennig (née Cheung, 張錫莉). I graduated from
Northcote in 1975. I feel honored to have been invited to write a reflection essay on my
career for this 75th anniversary issue. Since I graduated from Northcote, I’ve taught a variety
of language courses in Hong Kong and overseas. I love my students. They give me many
reasons to work hard and make it through tough times.

My first job was teaching English to Forms 1 and 2 students in Hong Kong. Unhappy
with the dominant methodology, I journeyed to the West to seek enlightenment. I studied
Teaching English as a Second Language in Montreal, Canada and became very interested
in the language acquisition process. It’s difficult to come up with effective methodologies
if we don’t know what’s going on with the learner. I decided to pursue an advanced degree
in Psycholinguistics at a university in Western Canada and had a great time learning about
language acquisition, comprehension, and production. The next stop in my journey was
sunny California, where I studied Sociolinguistics and Educational Linguistics at Stanford
University. I also got to supervise student teachers in the Stanford Teacher Education
Program. I felt inspired as some of them gave up lucrative jobs in the technology and finance
sectors to pursue a teaching career. After earning my doctoral degree, I moved on to become
Co-founder and Coordinator of a master’s degree program in Teaching English as a Second
Language at East Carolina University. Working in the American South gave me a different
perspective on American history and expanded my understanding of American culture. That
job was followed by a two-year stint as a visiting professor at a university in Japan. By then,
I had taught young people in different countries from one end of the world to the other. I was
amazed by how much they have in common. They are inquisitive and most have a sense of
social justice. Friends and pop culture are crucial parts of their lives. When they look at the

future beyond college, there’s excitement as well as apprehension.
When I look back on my teaching career, a standout aspect is the opportunity to build
special relationships with my students through our interaction and the teaching material.
One of the fondest memories I have of my students in Hong Kong was my re-enactment of
the arrival of the spirits in A Christmas Carol with all the lights turned off and the blinds
drawn. Of over forty preteens in the classroom, not a single one made a noise; they were
all listening eagerly to what was going to happen next. When it came time for them to role-
play selected scenes, I was struck by how willing they were to speak English when they
could take on the personas in the story. They didn’t show the same level of engagement

when I taught them English through language textbooks. I started to wonder why we couldn’t
just build our language lessons around short stories and novels instead of treating them as
tangential to the textbooks.
Having the right teaching material is critical to the relationship that we can build with
our students. It shows that we care about them and understand their needs. I’ve been teaching
Cantonese at Stanford University for over twenty years. Many of my students come from

134 羅富國校友會七十五周年紀念特刊