Celebrating Ms. Gayle Simmons and Let’s Learn Mandarin!

This post is exactly what it says, “Celebrating Ms. Gayle Simmons and Let’s Learn Mandarin!” Why?

Apart from loving to celebrate as you have clearly seen, I have chosen to highlight, or more  appropriately celebrate Ms. Simmons and “Let’s Learn Mandarin!” because I like the focus of her project and found an opportunity to learn a new language appealing. An opportunity to learn Mandarin is a refreshing and creative opportunity that provides many avenues to explore and engage an audience.

As an English and Spanish teacher often times I see students and many others building a barrier towards a new language.

My question to Ms. Simmons: Tell me something about yourself. Who is Gayle Simmons? (Your personality, your likes, dislikes etc.)

Her response: I am an ambitious young lady who is positive, outgoing, cheerful and very creative. I like to challenge myself with small projects whenever I have free time and I usually think out of the box. I consider myself to be quite unique as I tend to stand out because I have my own way of doing things. I love music, animals and all types of media and would like to one day be a politician.

I continued with the following: I love your choice of project. Please tell me what has led you to choose this as your project idea?

Her response: First of all, this really wasn’t an easy decision to make. At the beginning of the semester, I had five ideas which I was considering for a while. After speaking to Mr. James, he turned down my first idea which I had liked the most. So, yes, that means that “Let’s Learn Mandarin” was actually my second choice to do the social media project on. At first, I really had my doubts on whether I could create enough content for a blog with lots of posts but then the more I thought about it, the easier it became for me to think of many creative and unique ideas to make this project not only really fun for me to learn but to also make it intriguing to all my readers as well.

My next question: Our projects have been running for at least 5 weeks. From day 1 to now how have you seen growth of your project?

I must say that the growth of my project has exceeded my expectations thus far. I never thought that there were so many interesting things about China and Chinese culture. If I had the time, I would write a blog every single day plus I am so excited about doing the collaborations with my fellow students. I have already begun to collaborate and I must say that I am enjoying myself a whole lot and I would even like to arrange a collaboration with students in the entire class as a massive project.

I asked, ‘What has been your favourite part of this project thus far?’

Gayle’s response: My absolute favourite part of this project is filming the video blogs. That is the most enjoyable part that makes the whole project worth doing. To be more specific, I truly had the most fun doing the Happy Birthday video blog simply because it involved my co-workers who were a bit camera shy at first but then I eventually got them to relax and also enjoy themselves.’

My final question to her was this: What is the most positive thing you can identify coming out of this project?

How did she respond? Here’s how: There were several positive things arising from doing this social media project, “Let’s Learn Mandarin”. One of the most significant things is discovering that I have a real passion for linguistics and would be seriously considering this field as a possible career in the future.

How can you find out more about Ms. Gayle Simmons and “Let’s learn Mandarin”?

Facebook Page:- https://www.facebook.com/MandarinLearnersWelcome

Blog:-              http://letusalllearnmandarin.blogspot.com/

Twitter:-          https://twitter.com/Trinisexychick

Tumblr:-          https://www.tumblr.com/blog/letslearnmandarin

Youtube Channel:- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClH9ZRNZPl4u1FEvoEvmOCA/videos

Flickr:- https://www.flickr.com/photos/127631810@N05/