Immersion(part 2)

With some brief information on 北师大第二附属中学 (the school I am attached to), I will be now telling you more about what the local Chinese students learn in 二附中. I attended classes on history,maths, geography, Chinese,art,English. All subjects are taught in Chinese except for English lessons. Every week, they will change their seats. For example, for the 1st week, I maybe sitting in the 5th row.Then for the 2nd week, I will be sitting in the 6th row. While in the school, they will be also doing 眼保健操 for 2 to 3 times. This exercise will help to give their eyes a break. I think the reason why this exercise is implemented is that the students have to stay in school for long duration to study. As such, it will strained their eyes. There is also something special about their lunch. They do not need to buy their food. Lunch boxes will be provided and it will be found outside the classroom during lunch. Well, if that was implemented in Nanhua, that will certainly that will save us the trouble of going down to the canteen. However, that will also mean the school have to bear an increase in the cost of running the school and we feel the lack of variety in the food.

English Lesson: They learn more on how to converse in English. They combine knowledge and conversational English together. With knowledge in certain topics, it is easier to strike a conversation with somebody else. In our class,i learn about Beijing Opera. They learn more about, train their listening skills etc. But there are, of course, grammar, vocabulary, composition. Our Singapore English lessons focus more on the understanding of the English language. Thus this shows the different standard of the students in China and Singapore. However, don't let their looks fool you, they can still understand the language to a certain extent. But I can see that they are getting better. Their English teacher,although is a Chinese, she can speak perfect English and she is trying many ways to let her students speak more English.

Maths Lesson: The way of teaching here in China is almost the same as in Singapore. The Math teacher uses examples, give formulas, but more monotonous. He uses the textbook more often and rarely uses other medium to teach, like the Internet. Of course, there will be homework. the interesting point is that everything here is taught in Chinese even the homework questions. For instance, do you know what is 二项式定理 and 向量? It is binomial theorem and vectors respectively. I was being taught in English for so many years, so I am not used to being taught in Chinese. When the teacher is teaching about 向量, I have 3 words to describe.Blur,blur,blur! Partly because this is the first time I am hearing about 向量. But the main reason is that it is a new thing. Although I don't understand any of the concepts, i learn that Maths or rather everything can be taught in any language. English is not the only language in the world that can be used to teach. If you go to France, you will learn maths in French.

Art Lesson: It is actually the appreciation of various artwork.

History Lesson: The history that they learnt is different from ours. Singapore's elective history course is using world events to show the different trend in various part of the world. Teachers in China need to teach,of course, the history of China and they also touch on different countries. For example, they use the government structure of Britain, U.S.A, Germany, France to show the influence of capitalism in the 20th century. Some terms that i learnt 总统立宪制,君主立宪制, 共和制. So you can see that China history lesson is more broad. After some interaction with the students, i feel that their general knowledge is strong. Especially the various dates of the events of the world. Frankly speaking, I don't usually remember the dates. In this lesson, I see how well the teacher teach using powerpoint. Here, the teacher focus on the textbook. The powerpoint gives extra information.

Geography Lesson: When i look into their textbook, i think that the content covered is almost the same as that of Singapore.But i must point out about the knowledge they need to know. When given a set of latitude and longitude, they need to identify the location. Do you know there is a place called 火山岛 in the south of Argentina? You can see that like us the China students also need to remember a lot of content for exams.

Chinese Lesson: They called it . Actually, its syllabus is very different from ours. We read on different Chinese essays, however, we only touch the tip of the iceberg. In 二附中, the students had 语文课 that covers more on the Chinese literature. For example, i went through a lesson on 李清照's <<声声慢>>, a type of宋词. The students are supposed to understand and remember it. If this is carried out in Nanhua, it will like every student taking Chinese Literature. They will also be taught on the history of these literature works. For instance, the type of literature that is flourishing in each dynasty, how is it created. As for chinese lesson, you can see the different standards and requirements of the 2 education systems.
{The End}
(Please note that this is not representative of all the schools in China)