Currently, a great number of universities across from China are formulating teaching plans and designing online courses to ensure the feasibility of remote education programs, which is implemented under the initiative of Learning and Teaching at Home proposed by Ministry of Education. In order to promote the successful performance of online teaching, help teachers combat current challenges and guarantee the same quality as the off-line lessons, the School of Foreign Languages held a workshop on 31 March, 2020 on the theme of Teaching Materials, Pedagogy, Teaching Assessment: Hybrid Teaching Practices of Academic English. - The workshop has attracted over 500 English teachers from universities across China to participate in this event, which aroused overwhelming responses.
The event consisted of two sessions, expert lectures and public online courses, using Tencent Classroom to showcase the achievements of the High Quality Academic English construction of South China University of Technology. In the workshop, Professor Han Jinlong introduced the concept of compiling Academic English teaching materials in the Internet+ era, pointing out that teaching materials should be student-oriented and information-centered so that they are able to build a deep learning platform with real context, interaction, experience and reflection. The new teaching materials aim to boost the self-learning capability, enhance the coordination ability and cultivate innovation spirits for students with different models of online, hybrid and smart studying combined. In recent years, our English Tank team of SCUT has the University's English team has built up a three-dimensional Academic English teaching resources, including paper-based textbooks, electronic resources, catechism courses, SPOC, Language Centers and WeChat official account, which meets the daily teaching needs of teachers and students and creates a custormized learning experience for students.
Professor Xu Ying, Deputy Dean of the School of Foreign Languages, explained the basic concepts and main principles of formative assessment, and also introduced the implementation of formative assessment in the Academic English course in terms of the weighting of formative assessment in the overall assessment grade, the form of tasks, marking criteria and marking rules. The survey shows that students believe that formative assessment helps them to focus more on the learning process and realize the purpose of assessment for learning. The authenticity of the assessment can enhance their learning motivation and the co-created marking scheme help them to better understand. In addition, students wish to see more scaffolding provided in the assessment process, as well as improved accuracy and quality of feedback from their peers.
Zhu Lin, a teacher in the English Tank team, presented the results of our Academic English hybrid teaching model in practice. She introduced the design concept, operation method, implementation steps and teaching effectiveness of hybrid teaching with practical teaching cases, which provided an important reference for teachers in universities to carry out teaching reform and innovation.
Afterwards, the teachers from the English Tank team, Lu Rong, Shi Ying and Zhang Linlin, demonstrated the practice and application of our Academic English hybrid teaching model in the real classrooms. The participants actively joined the course and had a detailed and in-depth exchange with the lecturers after the class.
The construction of the Academic English course reflects the new trend of English reform in China's universities. In recent years, the English Tank team of South China University of Technology (SCUT) has been actively exploring the principles of High Quality Course construction, and has made significant achievements in the construction of Academic English teaching materials, the construction of catechism and SPOC, the exploration of hybrid teaching mode, and the testing and assessment of Academic English. The program has achieved remarkable results. At present, the Academic English has been awarded as a high-quality online open course in Guangdong Province, with a total of nearly 60,000 students, and has been successfully launched on the Xuexi platform. The Academic English teaching workshop fully demonstrated the achievements of course construction and served as a good model for online teaching during the epidemic for all universities in China.
