Halloween or more correctly Hallowe’en

is probably derived from the traditional

English name for this night: All Hallows’

Eve, which is the night before All Hallows’

Day.

All Saints and All Souls are traditionally

celebrated and remembered by many

Christians on the nights before and the

days of the 1st and 2nd of November

each year respectively and are traditional

times for asking for saints’ prayers and

for praying for the dead.

It is no coincidence that harvest and

Halloween occur at about the same time

of year in the UK. In fact, some scholars

have even traced the earliest origins of

Halloween back to pre-Christian times

claiming that this festival may have

started off as a pagan Celtic harvest

festival.

Perhaps one way of enjoying Halloween

here at DYU would be to take a walk out

beside the rice fields under the moon-

light. In this way, you should be more

fully able to appreciate its possible

harvest festival origins while enjoying the

beauty of the great outdoors at night.

Wishing you all a happy, safe and not too

scary Halloween!

____________________

Photos: The rice fields on the left and

right are located in Dacun ,大村鄉 not

far from DYU. The Halloween photos on

the top left, top right and bottom right of

this page were taken nearby the Red

House 紅樓, Ximending 西門町,

Taipei 臺北市

Happy Halloween DYU

International Newsletter

D A Y E H U N I V E R S I T Y

Volume 1, Issue 5

31 October, 2013

Frank Chang 章愷峰 (a

first year student of

Industrial Design 工業

設計學系 at DYU) tells

us about his three day cycling trip

Starting off in Zhonghe

中和 we rode to Tanshui

淡水.

Unfortunately it rained

and the road was very slippery so we had to ride slowly and really carefully. It was also very hard to see the road clearly because of

the heavy rain.

When we arrived in

Tanshui 淡水 we had

lunch at the Fishermen’s Wharf as we dried off.

After lunch we rode for about 4 or 5 hours to

Baishawan 白沙灣.

When it got dark we set up our tent. The ground under the tent was hard and hot so it was difficult

to fall asleep.

Cycling

from

New Taipei

to

Yilan

Page 2

Day three, we headed for our final destination in

Yilan宜蘭.

On our way we saw Turtle

Island 龜山島(as you can

see in the photo on the

right) and we returned to

New Taipei 新北市 via an

old tunnel (as you can see in the photo below).

Although exhausting it was a very satisfying cycling trip and certainly a great achievement!

______________

Yeliu 野柳 is also well

known for its naturally eroded rocks. There were many tourists from main-

land China viewing these

rocks.

After viewing these rocks we headed for Keelung

基隆 where we set up our

tent (as you can see in the photo on the right) at a local elementary school on a hillside. Since it started to rain again we set up our tent under a covered out-door area of the school.

Day two, after breakfast

we headed for Yeliu 野柳.

There were many cheap

fresh seafood dishes (such as the one in the photo below) which we really enjoyed.

Page 3

In ghost stories they may get up out of their coffins at night to jump along roads, streets, lanes and alleys looking

for someone or some-thing to eat. Some storytellers even say they are most powerful when there is a full

moon! However, some scholars

have traced their origin back to a time when Qing Dynasty Taoist priests would often accompany dead bodies on their last journey home. Bamboo sticks

were used to stand the dead body upright and for supporting the corpse’s arms. A strong man would carry the

Huang Ze-han黃則翰

(a first year student of plastic art

造型藝術系 at DYU)

shares some of his drawings of and knowledge about the origins of

Chinese Zombies

There are Chinese

zombies called jiang-

shi 僵屍. The fact that

they nearly always look like an upright standing corpse with their hands extended out in front of them and are usually depicted wearing clothing from the Qing Dynasty is no coincidence. Their mainly white but slightly purple face is no coincidence either.

corpse along by hold-ing it up on a Bamboo stick. They would often do so on a dark night, but sometimes

moonlight would still shine on the dead person’s face terrifying anyone who saw it with its white and slightly

purple appearance. The way it was carried along

on bamboo sticks gave the appearance of jump-ing since bamboo is quite flexible. Therefore, there is no need to be afraid of them now you know the truth. Happy

Halloween!

_________

1st Yongjingmaomu

Marathon

Kevin 鍾曜安 (a fourth

year student of

accountancy 會計系 at

DYU) tells us about his recent experience of running in a marathon

We began running from

the front gate of Yongjing Industrial Vocational High

School. The racing route followed Simen Road

西門路, Yongfu Road永福路

and Sizhu Road 四竹路.

The race was 5 kms long and took us about 25

minutes to complete.

This was my second long distance marathon but this time it felt much better because my friend ran along with me.

Running this race together with a friend made me more motivated and increased my confidence to finish the race.

______________

Chinese Zombies: fact or fiction?

朱宏佶 and 鍾曜安 (fourth year students of

Accountancy會計系 at DYU) getting ready to run

INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE CENTRE

Room J314 Foreign Languages

Building,

Dayeh University,

168 University Road, Dacun,

Changhua,

51591, TAIWAN (R.O.C.)

DAYEH UNIVERSITY

each student to say a few words about their imagin-ings.

To my surprise, this de-parture from the sterile

procedure of practicing speaking as directed by a textbook transformed the

stultifying atmosphere of the classroom into one of laughter, joy and genuine attempts at self-

expression.

Suddenly I had students speaking up and using vocabulary I did not know they possessed!

One student who never opened her mouth and

always gave me that “I am too cool for this class” look of disdain, began to speak. As she shared her

desire to travel to Milan, Italy to learn fashion de-sign, others began to ask

her questions about her work there and a conver-sation developed about using English to communi-cate with designers from around the world.

One young man who seemed to always reserve our class time for sleeping told the room how much

Braden Rico (an ILC English

teacher) shares some of his

ideas about engaging

students’ imaginations

I once taught a class

on Saturday afternoons at a high school in

Kaohsiung. The mood in the classroom was so somber that I sometimes wished something, any-

thing would happen out-side the window just to enliven proceedings.

On one of these tor-turous afternoons I sud-denly felt the majestic touch of the muse’s hand

and an idea came to me to ask everyone to close their eyes and imagine they were someplace else other than a lan-

guage classroom, doing

something that made them happy. I asked them not to think about English vocabulary or grammar but instead to think about being some-where where they were

happy and just hap-pened to find themselves using English instead of Chinese. Then with their eyes still closed, I asked

he would like to ride a Harley Davidson bike through Canada. He imagined himself joking in English with other rid-

ers.

I was stunned by what was occurring. What

had happened? Was this an English teaching mir-acle in the making? What had caused the

sudden turnaround?

Obviously my attempt to revive the energy of the room and allow the use of imagination did some-thing to energize those young minds turned off

by a traditional and tedi-ous trek through an Eng-lish textbook.

By allowing the students

to take the lead and speak about what inter-ested them, I began to

see that imagination is a powerful tool for en-gagement. From that point on I have felt that the use of imagination in language education

ought to be more care-fully considered because successful learning

Learning with Imagination

Phone: +886-4-8511888

Fax: +886-4-8511666

http://langcntr.dyu.edu.tw/

newsletter

begins with imagination precisely because the use of imagination is linked to our percep-tions, our memory, our

emotions and our gener-ation of new ideas. Surely this is not news? We can all appreciate

that imagination is at the

heart of learning be-cause it is the engine which drives experimen-tation and theory form-ing, constructing a crossroad from what we know to what is not yet

known. Perhaps it is time for more language students to consider the role of imagination in their learning. In Tai-wan, education is still

viewed as primarily in-

volving the memoriza-tion of information and facts measurable by standardized tests. This is certainly a tenacious part of education here

but engaging students’ imaginations during the education process is a powerful force that awaits discovery by us all.

___________________

Call for newsletter

contributions from

students and staff

Submissions should be

original, include original

photographs and be

e-mailed to 馬丁老師

Martin Murray, editor (主編)

of this newsletter and ILC

English teacher :

martin@mail.dyu.edu.tw

Many thanks!