Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Washburn University professor holds ‘Movie Night’ for international students

From the fall of 2013, there is a regular activity called ‘Movie Night’ that hold by Larry McFall. This activity is placed at his house every Friday night.

“In talking with my Intensive English students before and after classes, I learned that many of them really enjoyed movies,” said McFall. “I thought the ‘Movie Night’ might provide a fun but safe social outlet for the students and keep them working on their English.” Besides, McFall also hold Sunday afternoon culture discussions for international students to improve their English.

McFall started with invitations to students who were in his classes. However, in recent semesters he have been teaching basic level students who need to have a higher level of English to appreciate the movie discussions. So in recent semesters the students who have come have heard simply by word of mouth.

“They aren’t my students. I’m actually very happy about this because I know in some cultures, a student might feel obligated to come to an activity sponsored by his or her teacher. We want the students who come to come out of their own desire and not a sense of obligation to their teacher,” he said.

The hardest thing for McFall and his family is saying goodbye to so many friends they have come to know. Most of the students they meet are only here for a semester or two. He may never see his friends who have gone back to China or Japan or Saudi Arabia or Senegal or Bangladesh or wherever again.

“Saying goodbye is one of the most difficult things in this life. That’s why death is so hard,” he said.
McFall said he will not stop ‘Movie Night’ until the students stop coming to his house. He enjoy and thankful for the time that with his students.




15 comments:

  1. Wonderful job with the quotes and summaries. It flowed very nicely and had a solid ending.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The spacing on your post is a little wonky. "He enjoy and thankful for the time that with his students" You could say He enjoys and is thankful for the time that he spends with his students.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I loved your incorporation of quotes. My one correction would be just to fix the spacing and font issues to make it more readable. Great job!

    ReplyDelete
  4. I love the use of quotes, but at the end, I'm not sure if the formatting is just translation form where you typed this, and where its posted. If not, maybe make the last couple lines read more like a story. Great job though, and very interesting story!

    ReplyDelete
  5. I think it is awesome how McFall is doing this for students, especially over the weekends! I think this conveys just how great of professors we have at Washburn. I would give credentials to McFall and say what he teaches or simply that he is a professor at Washburn. Great story!

    ReplyDelete
  6. I liked that you included quotes in your story. Quotes have a way of making the story more relatable. However, there are major formatting edits that need to be made. The fonts and font sizes change throughout which is distracting. Don't say Washburn University in a headline because it takes up too much space. Instead say "WU professors sponsors 'Movie Night' for international students."

    ReplyDelete
  7. The first sentence I would say that the movie night is held by (insert name). Great story and very interesting, good job!

    ReplyDelete
  8. I really like this article and find this very interesting to know that McFall is doing this for students. I would change "called 'Movie Night' that hold by," to is held by or that holds. Other than that change, it flows nicely but would change formatting, like mentioned above. Overall, great job!

    ReplyDelete
  9. I like the topic! I didn't know this was going on, it's a great way to get international students involved. There are a few spacing and grammatical errors, but overall I like the story!

    ReplyDelete
  10. The different fonts make it hard to read. And spacing needs fixed.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Some formatting issues as far as space and some grammatical error, but still a great topic.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Adjust the spacing so that it flows the same throughout the paper. Otherwise, I like the topic.

    ReplyDelete
  13. The spacing of this article I think is the biggest problem. Other than that, you just had small errors that could be easily fixed. Great Job!

    ReplyDelete
  14. The spacing is really distracting. It may be your settings on your computer.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Strange spacing, and at the very beginning, it should be "Since the fall of 2013...", because it's something that began in the past (and still is ongoing).

    ReplyDelete