Dear friends,
Great inputs from all of you! They are stimulating! Thanks.
From Mr. Sa: "当然我还觉得,有些时候,对于太爱思考而不行动的学生,要让他停止思考." This is such a brilliant idea! I have seen so many students or even teachers who have this problem. Some people like to make plans and seldom achieve them. Some like to work very hard without knowing why they are working so hard. Some are so well read and they are such good public speakers/advocates, but they don't always understand what they are talking about -- therefore, not convincing.
From dqchris: "林老师在用大自然教琴,大自然是我们生活中的老师,学习小提琴要从生活中开始." Making simple connections between instrumental study and daily life motion/concepts is so effective in teaching. For little kids, I love referring piano techniques to animal movements. Little ones usually can get the concept immediately as they are good at imitating anything!
When I interview new students, I always ask about their interests, including sports, activities, food, favorite subjects, pop songs, story book/fiction...etc. Then, I usually can relate what they understand and familiar with in explaining some abstract concepts. It's fun and fascinating!
I once had a middle school student who wrote an article called "Physics in relation to piano playing". That was an assignment hoping to increase his awareness of the mechanism in piano playing. (I shall post it if I can find it...)