Instructor teaches students in small group

The 1^st Student Autonomous Group Learning Program, administered by the Center for Teaching Excellence, National Dong Hwa University, encourages students to learn and practice through multiple sources and channels outside regular courses. Sponsored by the Autonomous Learning Program, Guo, Yan-Jun from the Department of Sinophone Literatures and Xuan, Hao-Ping from the Department of Education and Human Potentials Development together with five more students started the ten-week intensive courses of Handwriting Practicing Program. The instructor, Lin, Guan-Jie, personally designed the courses and used his self-edited materials for instruction. Moreover, Professor Lee, Shew-Hua at the Department of Chinese and Chen, Tien-Chiu at the Department of Education and Human Potentials Development were invited as the course consultant.

The instructor, Lin, Guan-Jie, had rich experiences of teaching penmanship in schools, including Nanhua Elementary School, Fuyuan Elementary School, Huagang Junior High School in Hualian, and Yong-An Elementary School in Taipei. Currently, as a graduate student, he is still studying and improving himself in the field of calligraphy, language teaching, and relevant studies on courses of body, soul and spirit. He is also a certificated elementary school teacher.

Students practice meditation before class to improve handwriting ability

In response to the diverse background of more than forty students from 21 departments of five colleges, covering bachelor, master, and PhD. Lin made adjustments to the conventional teaching materials and methods, decreasing the load of classic literature largely. He advocated integrating Gestalt theory to penmanship instruction and developed an interactive mode of handwriting teaching. To be more specific, principles of handwriting are taught by means of visual organization, and interaction between students is encouraged. A group and fan page is built on Facebook（〈https://www.facebook.com/calligraphy520〉）and is used as an extended classroom for students to foster autonomous learning and mutual interaction.

He said, ”Handwriting is an event of bodily movement. Communicating with your body is the most efficient way to excellence. Bearing this in mind, I realize that meditation would be helpful. Performing meditation involves two reciprocal aspects, centering and witnessing. While centering aims at concentrating one’s attention, witnessing aims at pointless attention, which is to put attention on the coordination of eyes, the brain, and hands at the same time. Both are able to facilitate the alertness of the connection between mind and muscles, contributing to positive effects of writing flow and fluent motions.”

The results of a survey revealed that most students became more focused and relaxed after meditation, accomplished the unitization of body and mind, and improved their handwriting ability directly. However, there are still some students said that they are too young to do it, and others claimed that they had no interest in performing meditation temporarily. Nevertheless, they were all willing to try and practice. What’s interesting is that almost all students reach an agreement saying that handwriting is a kind of meditation event. Through practicing handwriting, they live the moment and have chances to communicate more deeply with not only language but themselves.

Students demo theirs handwritings in the classroom