We have been in the United States for four weeks, and we have been gradually adapting the new environment from the beginning of the panic(except food and prices). The progress of learning has passed more than half, and we have a preliminary understanding of the teaching of UCB.

In the ESL (Summer English Language) series of courses, one of the most important tasks is fieldwork, which is diverse in form – survey interviews, group tours, lectures, dance lessons, concerts, etc. Although I was somewhat overwhelmed by the strangeness of this form, I felt very interesting and happy after attending it once. Especially the teachers asked us to interview strangers, which is a great exercise for my courage. These diverse activities have made me more willing to take up the challenge, and I am willing to go out (although I am still a little worried because of security issues), and I am more willing to open my eyes to see this different country.

Figure 1.1 teacher was introducing something to us

Figure1.2 one of the fieldwork places

Perhaps due to the small class of ESL series and the just a little of specific knowledge-based learning tasks, the focus is on training English listening, speaking, reading and writing, etc. The teachers emphasize they hopes that we can learn in class and have some reward. Although the process of each lesson is very clear, the progress will be a little slow, but teachers value the real-time feedback of the students. There is a lot of interaction, the participation of students in the class is very high, and there are a lot of discussion sessions. During the discussion, the teachers will look back and forth among the various groups, participate in the discussion and make sure everyone is involved in the discussion. The teachers also gave the students a lot of opportunities and requests to express their views, and they continue to regroup students to help students know each other and communicate. I am not sure if this is a feature of a language course or a feature of American teaching.

In addition to the ESL series of courses, SUMMER SESSION E also offers a large number of professional courses for us to choose, so I chose an experimental class, I want to know the atmosphere of the American experimental class. The content of the experiment class is similar to that in China – pre-study, hands-on operation, and experimental reports, and the form is also a group cooperative learning method. However, UCB's experimental class has less content to explain all the knowledge, and more course reviews. The teachers will take a moment to ask us to review the lessons learned in the previous experimental class in the form of questions, but will not take too much time to explain the basic knowledge we have preliminarily learned, and then left a lot of time for us to do it by ourselves. During the experiment period, the teachers will patrol the teams, listen to our questions and answer them one by one. The experiment’s atmosphere is very relaxed.

Figure 2 observing slides in experiment class

In general, we have gained a lot from this course. There are still two weeks to go. We will continue to study hard and keep moving forward!