I knowthat I have disappeared for almost 2 months. Let me explain! I took a socialmedia break in august because I was pretty sick during that month. I think itwas COVID again, but I couldn’t be bothered to take a test. And then, one ofthe symptoms was pinky eyes, so I was wearing my frame glasses almost the wholetime and feeling extremely lazy to put on contact lenses and sitting in front of the camera. So, I took a break. Spending a lot of time with my family andfriends, taking care of my two-yr-old son, yes I’m a mom, and watching him growso fast in front of my very own eyes. It really humbles me down to see how fasta tiny little human being can grow….But it doesn’t just stop there.

To behonest I've been having this social media influencer crisis for quite some timeand I think it was the right thing to do to take a breather and focus on me.every day, when I get on social media I'm bombarded with all kinds of newcontent, new ideas, new out-of-the-box video editing style, the grind justnever ends.  I feel literally that I’mtrapped in a rat race. Before I took the break, I felt anxious, discouraged,unconfident, and had very low self-esteem sometimes, I felt that I didn’t havethe time, the energy or the right mind space to compete in this field as ahectic working mom. and to be honest, I always feel very proud of myself in thesense that I don't follow the mainstream, I don’t see myself as a person who lovesfollowing people and jumping on the bandwagon without thinking it through. I’mnot a full-time influencer, my primary job is a teacher.  And I'm doing a fantastic job, getting a lotof students every month, being recognized by more and more people, I reallydon't have to burn myself out in this realm of social media. The reason why I starteddoing it in the first place was that I love and enjoy that connection with myfollowers and I hope I can do my part to create some useful, helpful andhopefully inspiring content for people I care about, and have somewhat a voicein today’s world.

But Iknow I should stop when it starts to take a toll on my mental health. Andthat’s why I took a pause. And to be completely candid, it really felt good. Itwas like this massive weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I had enoughthings on my plate, and it felt great to have one thing less in my life. Socialmedia used to be such a big chunk in my life.

And thenfast forward to September, the IELTS new season came, dun dun dun. as you allknow, the questions and topics in IELTS speaking test get renewed every 4months. In Jan, May and Sep, hundreds of new questions will fly in. And as anIELST teacher who focuses on speaking test, every 4 months, I need to stay inthis almost like a mental jail, keep outputting, just type, type and typematerials, all the sample answers, different versions of answers for mystudents. every season, I will have this 140,000 words written for them toprepare for the speaking test. Let me show you what I wrote in September, it’smy baby:

For part1 section, almost under each topic, first I wrote some general expressions andknowledge related to the topic, and then you have the specific questions, andthat’s when you can see that I prepared multiple versions of answers cateringto different needs, preferences and personalities.

Look atthis part 2+3 document, I wrote, general knowledge and expressions, the wholepart 2 material, I made sure I’ve used the expressions that I provided in thebeginning, and showcased how you use them in an organic way. And then, there’spart 3, I made sure I wrote my answers looooong enough so my students can pickout different insights, ideas and expressions from different parts. I alsoconsciously and purposefully used the “thought tools” that I teach in class todemonstrate how relatively easier it can be to answer part 3 questions once youhave the right tools in your hand.

AND THEN,this part is incredible, I make sure that I go through each answer in mycourse. It’s insane. It’s 140,000 words. I spend hours and hours in my livestreaming classes, but those hours wouldn’t be able to cover all the topics,and that’s why I also record some extra video classes for my students, I’mtalking about 10-hour video classes just to go through everything. Not tomention, I also have other video classes teaching pronunciation, strategies,techniques, thought tools and all that jazz.

I knowthis sounds surreal but that's how I believe teaching English should be like.I'm trying to give my students all that I can offer. and based on all theseyears of teaching, I’ve gradually changed my way of teaching 180, from focusingon techniques to emphasizing on the real content, the expressions, the way oftalking. I realize that what my students or Chinese students in general need isnot more strategies, more techniques more thought tools, but more references,more content, more things to talk about, the natural expressions the idiomaticway of talking.