ECNU President Chen Qun presents certificates to students of Study China Program 2012.
Seventy-six students received both certificates and blessings from ECNU President Chen Qun at the closing ceremony for Study China Program 2012 on September 14.
Sponsored by the government of England, North Ireland, and Scotland, the program is a three-week residential program to introduce English students to Chinese language and culture. It is hosted by the University of Manchester and East China Normal University, and this is the fifth time for ECNU to host the program continuously since 2008.
This year, Global Education Center of ECNU has made some changes in the courses of the program in addition to traditional arrangements of Chinese language and cultural courses, such as calligraphy, folk music, Taichi; lectures on Chinese economy; visits to Chinese families and companies, etc.
The arrangements, especially the well-designed courses, impressed these students deeply. "Interesting, useful and impressive!" said James Higgins, a graduate student from Queen's University Belfast.
As a major of international trade, Higgins enjoyed the course of Chinese Marketing Strategy best. Based on case studies of successful Western firms in China such as Carrefour, Apple, IKEA, and KFC, the course examined marketing questions in China with reference to common life and made the course interesting and easy to understand. And all the students were arranged to have a field trip to Volkswagen’s Shanghai plant for a better understanding of the course.
In fact, almost all courses in the program have made some improvement to increase their depths and connotations. "This is the fifth year to carry out the program, and we want to make some changes," said Wang Gang, vice director of Global Education Center & International Students Office.
According to Wang, two new English-taught courses about China were set this year, and ECNU was the first Chinese universities to increase new courses in the program.
Besides that, more courses of Chinese language were set to guarantee all these English students' Chinese can reach HSK Level I. So it was no surprise to see the 76 students from over 20 universities around Britain say farewell and even sing songs in Chinese at the closing ceremony, as some of them had improved their Chinese to HSK Level II.
Students sing Chinese songs at the closing ceremony for Study China Program 2012.
Written by: Liu Jinyu
Source: ECNU News (Chinese)
