Tag Archives: talk

Education

David Feng to Talk to Chinese Students in London on Studying Tips

David Feng, Visiting Academic and Visiting Lecturer at the University of Westminster, will be speaking to the Chinese Students and Scholars Association of the University of Westminster on 12 October 2014. The event begins at 15:00 and will be held in Room A.1.04 of the Harrow Campus.

David will be focusing on how Chinese students can be excel in the UK in their studies. He will share his 12 years in Switzerland, 10 years in China as a student, combined with teaching lessons in China, Switzerland and the UK, to students from over 40 countries and territories, and will include advice on what students should do to improve their marks, but also to improve their experiences studying and living overseas.

The presentation is expected to be given mostly in Mandarin Chinese.

For those interested, registration (free) is required.

2014 07 15 CHN

Teaching Beijing’s Most Internationalised District English (Previous Version)

The Chinese government can at times be one of more difficult “group of students” to talk to, and it’s here in China, more than anywhere else, where a solid track record and years, if not decades, of experience, will probably be much more in your favour than anywhere else. Having solid (but also legal!… as in “non-corrupt”) relations somewhere in the system will also work in your favour.

It took me over 10 years of Chinglish-gazing around the country to be shown the right people to that one classroom in the Foreign Affairs Office of Beijing’s most internationalised district, Chaoyang, where people came in the evening hours of 15 July 2014, to listen to me speak about Chinglish — and how to fix it. For around an hour, I briefed around 20 people, most of them quite visibly enthusiastic, on how these mistakes were made, where they were often made, and how they could be best corrected. To ensure learners were best versed into the English language, even the introduction by the district’s foreign office itself was in English.

This was my first go at teaching an “all-government” audience, but if you could hold a microphone in front of thousands of unknown faces, you could do the same in front of 20 mandarins without a mic. I was happy to have helped the district of Chaoyang, home to many expats and embassies, improve their English in the run-up to hosting the APEC summit later that year.