College English Language Center of GZIC provides various supports to improve students’ English proficiency

Diagram of curriculum system

Thanks for the great efforts of the preparation by the Office of Teaching and Global Affairs and the School of Foreign Languages for  more than half a year, the College English Language Center of Guangzhou International Campus（GZIC）was established and started for operation in the early November. As an important initiative for the construction of the pilot project for emerging engineering talents training , the Language Center provides all sorts of courses and activities, such as “one-to-one” customized tutorials and series of lectures concerning “Learning skills on English-medium courses” and “Intercultural exchanges”, as well as English Corners and related seminars, all of which give intensive training for undergraduates to improve their practical English proficiency and adaptability for English-medium leaning.

Since the Center began to run, the courses reservation system was overwhelmed with large demands.

Customized tutorials

As new pilot projects, the“one-to-one” customized tutorials that meet the students’ demands quite well are very popular for students. The courses of which are composed of oral and written classes, and are designed with language analysis and customized training by foreign teachers. With free communication atmosphere and diversified teaching means, the courses can help students to solve difficulties, questions and puzzles in English language learning, and is very effective to help the students to gain relaxed and pleasant learning experiences. As there are so many students select these courses, the Language Center is going to make progresses on faculty arrangement and curriculum optimization to serve more students in the near future.

Besides, the Language Center also provides a series of remarkable open lectures, such as “Learning skills on English-medium courses” and “Intercultural exchanges”, to help students to overcome the difficulties when they get initial involve in the English-medium courses, and eliminate their puzzles in the intercultural exchanges environment.

The opening lecture of “Learning skills on English-medium courses” given by Joe attracted a large number of students, who hoped to acquire useful learning methods to settle the problems in their professional courses which need very high language abilities. In the lecture, Joe explained the profound language skills in a simple way, helping the students to build up their confidences. In the meantime, Joe created a harmonious atmosphere of communication, and demonstrated the way of participation in learning English-medium courses successfully.

While the first lecture of “Intercultural exchanges” course was started by Bill. He had a humorous language style, focusing on the basic concept of culture and the significance of intercultural exchanges, taking case analysis as the main line in his lecture, which benefited everyone student greatly.

Various activities such as lectures, seminars and English corners

When learning a language, the students shall be engaged in linguistic practices and demonstrations besides listening and learning from others. Accordingly, the Language Center has designed some extracurricular activities elaborately, such as English corners, seminars and salons. The first English seminar was led by Jason, who carry out topics by the form of “video exhibition” and “interesting tips”, succeeded in building a pleasure learning atmosphere for students to unload their minds and communicate smoothly. While the English corners, which are close to everyone’s daily life, often bring people closer. Once, Jeff started by the topic of “Pedestrians and Motorcycles Yield to Each Other”, encouraging every student participated to talk. Based on such activities, the Language Center will also strive for new approaches of participation and interaction to make the courses more interesting for the students to learn and gain more.

There will be various sorts of courses and activities to be launched in GZIC, which can be found on the official WeChat account named “SCUT Language Center” for time and venues arrangements in details.

Translated by Yang Tianran        

Edited by Chen Juncheng        

Proofread by Wu Zhaosheng        

Source from the GZIC, SCUT News Network