Vice President Wen’s Visit to ELC
By Rita Zheng, ELC Associate Director
On Thursday afternoon, December 4, 2008, Prof. Xiaobo Wen, Vice President of STU, accompanied by Dr. Anthony Fung, Executive Director of Li Ka Shing Shantou University Foundation, visited the English Language Center (ELC).
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Five ELC faculty members, Hong Ngoc Pham, Micah Jarnot, Rita Zheng, Peter Xiao and Bruce Chen, and two staff members, Daniel Li and Tao Yang, welcomed the two school leaders at the ELC Teacher's Lounge. The meeting started with Rita Zheng's PPT report, which included the ELC's brief history and structure, the English Enhancement Program and relevant achievements in terms of teaching, research, faculties' professional development and students' progress in the practical use of English, and further plans and goals that the ELC strives to achieve in the next few years. During the report, Peter Xiao added quite some valuable information and shared his perspectives on the reform program and the ELC's future development. VP Wen and Dr. Fung were impressed by the reform that the ELC has been implementing since 2002 with the aim of cultivating students' English communicative competence and critical thinking abilities through teaching innovations inside classroom and language use environment with a number of co-curricular activities outside classroom.
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At the end of the meeting, VP Wen and Dr. Fung asked about the challenges and difficulties that the ELC is facing and its expectations of the school authorities to help solve the problems. Micah Jarnot pointed out that the class size, which was approximately 35 students or more currently, led to fewer chances for students to practice their spoken English. Hong Ngoc Pham wished that there were more involvement of other colleges and departments in the ELC's co-curricular activities such as Semifinal Speech and Singing Contests and annual English Festival. The other concerns included foreign teachers’ recruitment and retention, the effectiveness of the post test, and the exit test to identify STU graduates’ language competence. VP Wen was concerned about the measures to encourage students and keep their enthusiasm for participating in the co-curricular activities provided by the ELC aiming to develop their language use abilities.
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