Comparing the Chinese and U.S. lessons, there are a number of differences in terms of
lesson structures. Chinese lessons were dominated with whole class instruction, while
group activity dominated the U.S. lessons. In the U.S. classroom, the students were
divided into several groups, and the lessons were delivered through group activities. In
the Chinese classroom, the lessons were delivered through whole classroom teaching,
although there was frequent peer discussion. Each U.S. lesson included “warm-ups,”
which were related to the new topic to be learned in the lesson, but not related to the
topics in the previous lessons. In the Chinese lessons, all lessons started with a review
of knowledge learned in the previous lessons. This suggests that there were better
connections between the Chinese lessons than between the U.S. lessons. In the U.S.
lessons, the teacher usually did not present a summary for each lesson, while the
Chinese teacher regularly summarized the key points of each lesson.