In the afternoon on September 20th, the 46th Teachers Cross-cultural communication English Salon was held in Room B2-7, the Experiments and Training Building.
President Liu Defu signed up to participate in the salon via the online system. Hosted by Dan Churchman, the salon No.46 was on Higher Education: American VS Chinese and attracted more than 40 teachers, administrative staff, student representatives from nine schools such as the School of Mechanical Engineering, the School of Art and Design, and the School of Foreign Languages.
Two lecturers, Alex Ballard and Mandy Long, who have deep insights into the higher education system in the United States and China, gave presentations as well as guidance to group discussion. Alex, one of the most popular foreign English teachers in Hubei University of Technology, graduated from American university with a bachelor's degree with honors in English literature and a minor in psychology. He holds a full TEFL certificate and has been teaching at our university for 2 years. Mandy Long is an associate professor of School of Foreign Languages in HBUT and has been teaching here for 15 years. She has a master's degree in foreign linguistics and applied linguistics. She has been a visiting scholar at the California State University, Long Beach for a year and has rich overseas experience.
Alex and Mandy delivered their opinions and analysis on the features of higher education in the United States and China from four subjects: student independence, teacher’s role, teacher-student relationship and academic efficiency. Their consensual and contending points of view showed some cultural communication as well as collision.
In the discussion, each group gave marks to score American students and Chinese students from four aspects: student independence, teacher’s freedom, non-academic interactions, and academic efficiency. After that, a teacher representative of each group explained their conclusions. President Liu participated in the discussion actively and gave a summary in fluent English as a spokesman of Group 5, which won admiration and appreciation from all the audiences.
At the end of the whole lecture, President Liu spoke highly of the salon and emphasized the importance of English learning. As a president, he encouraged everyone studying English to promote China’s rise, to build China’s image and the Chinese dream, for HBUT’s progress to promote the school’s international development, and for becoming outstanding talents to enhance the global ability and achievements. As an English learner, President Liu shared his personal experience that the only way to learn English is to study hard and practice hard. Before he took the national gaokao in 1978, the second year after the Resumption of College Entrance Examination following Decade of the Cultural Revolution, his English was very poor but he studied the Oxford English dictionary heavily for 3 months and finally got admitted to a university. In order to win national scholarship and to study abroad later, he fell asleep every night with an English radio station playing. Currently, he still reads professional English text books to keep his skills sharp. President Liu’s experience inspired the teachers greatly.
It is reported that the Teachers’ English Salon is held by the Department of International Relations and Teacher’s Development Center to improve the teacher’s English proficiency and cross cultural communication skills. More than 1500 teaching and administrative staff joined the previous 46 salons for free since 2016. Our foreign teachers and some of the overseas visiting scholars take the role as a salon lecturer covering English linguistics, English learning methods, foreign customs, gourmet, tourism, science and technology, humanities, and other topics. The quota is taken at once by the teachers as soon as the online signing up system is available, and the staff’s enthusiasm of English learning has improved significantly.
In this semester, the teachers’ salon is open from 16:00 to 17:00 every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. The signing up system for the salon is available at 21:00 every Friday through the QQ group (62663954) and the WeChat group湖工大教师国际交流微信群（teachers exchange abroad）.
