April 15th has met with another cultural activity for international students held by International Liaison Office and Student Affairs office with the support of Student Union’s International Student Center: teaching in Minhang Qilun Primary School as volunteers. It was an internationalized teaching team consisting of 11 international students from America, New Zealand etc and workers from International Student Center. Therefore, the fifth-grade students had an interesting English classemerged in both English and Chinese cultural interaction.

According to the students’ English proficiency, the ways the internationalized teaching team taught were interesting and colorful. For example, the game of guessing English words by body’s imitating to get familiar with each other successfully improved students’ image memories about English words as well as their interpersonal skills; singing English songs helped these children to develop a feeling of the language and a sense of rhythm; the next part of getting to know the foreign cultures introduced things like eating habits, festivals and customs, which greatly broadened these children’s international horizons; in the final part of Q&A, they asked these volunteers how to decide their life goals and go for them, and also shared their growing pains with each other. Their interaction of ideas not only inspired these children’s hope for their bright future, but also let these volunteers think about how to plan their life.

This activity has not only helped develop these children’s strong interest in learning English by their participation in English talking, but also let these international students have an understanding of the basic education in China for further knowledge of Chinese culture. The teachers of the fifth grade class have also appreciated this activity, finding that their primary students became more communicative and active. As for students, they excitedly found themselves capable of understanding the English words spoken by these international volunteers. Foreign language is interesting and they hope they will have more opportunities to talk to these international friends.

School of Mechanical Engineering will continue to hold other activities for international students in spring term of 2015 apart from this one and kite-flying festival, such as City Puzzle, and “My SJTU Story” photo contest, etc.