It is quite amazing that I found an article that was written by myself about five years ago on some suggestions of how to improve the English to the young students. It was invited by my dorm mate Ding who used to be the dean of the department of study, the student union of dept. of Software Engineering and it was scheduled for a presentation. But I was not that confident to take it ( I was of no experience on lecturing at that time), and then it was posted as printed.
This is an article that was revised by Mr. Hutchison, a kind teacher from Canada, who is now still teaching in Changshu. The reason why I post that old article here is, there are really great piles of useful and native expressions from Mr. Hutchison, and they are significant to us even today, when our English has been greatly improved. Following is the old article without any modification. But remember that the copyright is sincerely preserved.
The Introduction of English Approaching
Gu Jun, 03 Statistics, Math Dept.
Distinguished mates:
Firstly I would like to introduce myself, I am Gu Jun, the 2nd year student as a statistics major from Math Dept. I get extremely glad and delighted to be standing here, sharing my experience on my English approaching with all of you.
I am, of course, quite strange to you, while I am quite familiar with the mates in the 2nd year, I am just fortunately invited by Ding Wei, many of you should be quite familiar with this name, who is the leader of the Study Dept in your Students’ Union and, also my dormmate.
Before my speech, I see that there has been 2 mates sharing their English study experience with you, and I don’t want to just repeat their words, such as how to enlarge your vocabulary, how to pass the finals, etc. What I want to talk about is just something about oral English and its relation with the traditional English learning.
You can apparently see the importance of oral English. English is not only a kind of tool that is only used for exams but it is a communicating tool, just similar to the mobile phones on your hands. Just taking your future as an instance, you all sitting here are software-engineering majors, who will go to some computer company to be programmers. But in many large companies, such as Intel, IBM, or Microsoft China, English is just their working language, you must communicate with others in English, but if you cannot speak even one simple English statement, how can you successfully worth your salt?
PRETCO, CET-4/6 is of course very important, I admit, I am now also very busy preparing for the CET-4 on Jan. 8, but I do remember they are not the only purpose that you learn English. Just consider that even you get the full mark in CET, but when coming across a foreigner, you get so nervous, or rather say fearful that you are unable, even to speak one word out, then I shall ask, where is the benefit that you learn English?
Following is just some personal advice on how to improve oral English, but human characteristics varies, you may find some better and more suitable methods for your present situation.
If you want to practice your spoken English, I think the first element that you need is just courage, you should be able to get rid of embarrassment whiling talking to others in English, you must learn to speak English with others, such as the foreigners in our campus. Have you ever seen the tall man? Yeah, he is Allistair Hutchison, who is really a kind man, and so is his wife. I talk to him sometimes, in fact, speaking English to some foreigner is not so fearful as you imagine, what you must do is just to say and be calm.
Once you want to speak good, smooth English, you need a lot of opportunities to practice, but you may tell me that you have not got the environment for that language, so do I, Chinese is our native language, not only you, but also I can seldom get the opportunity to speak English. So the way that I choose is just to write. I write about 20 English emails per week, the destinations are various, ranging from my brother, and my pen friend in USA or just my classmates here. The more you write, the more familiar you will be with English, once you are familiar enough with the frequent words in English, you are able to speak good English naturally.
The core of English study is actually very clear. That is, you should learn to think in English, instead of Chinese. You can speak English to yourself which I think a really good and sufficient promotion to your oral English practice.
What I talk about above is just the way to practice oral English, but I recognize that you are advised to read extensively. Without large vocabulary as the basis, how can you successfully express your minds in English?
Well, time is up, I think I should wrap up, wish you all would speak English smoothly in the coming future.
Thank you so much for your patience.
Gu
Math Department
Dec.7,2004
If you are interested in such topic, please contact the author with following email address directly: gujun1225@cslg.cn (Not Available Any Longer)
Quite occasionally I get the ticket for admission of a employment conference this morning, accompanying with my friends I participated the employment conference as my first time of doing so after the last participation of such activity two years ago in Nanjing. But this conference, frankly speaking, is not a good one, no matter whether it is evaluated under the organization or its size. While, it does offer quite numerous positions for those who are willing to be a teacher.
For those who are holding a master’s degree and with strong willing of being a teacher in a college, the experience today seems to be a dilemma. If you are willing to be a tracked for a teaching position in an acceptable university, a PhD degree seems to be a must. But if you can accept the comparative low salary for the similar position in a technical school, then you have the opportunities of being accepted. While once accept such position, new problems will occur. The low probability of being a professor and tutor for doctoral students, and the enforcement of taking the Ph.D study can all be coming problems that are waiting to be solved.
There has been quite long for me to consider, but never provide a substantive answer that, whether it is necessary for a teacher holding a Ph.D degree, especially for those technical school. It is of no doubt that teachers with good academic training, and holding an advanced degree can obviously help students broaden their horizon, rather than keeping a narrow vision on the skills and knowledge points printed on the books. However, with the concern that the main task for the undergraduate students is to build a solid foundation, I don’t know if the research experience of a Ph.D students or a Master’s student would help. What I argue more practically, is to hire some teachers with working experience in an accounting or consulting firm, who can deliver some practical skills.
However, for the training on academics for graduate students, things are totally different. These students require more training on the research issues, such as the theory explanation, research methodology and some introductory lectures on contemporary research. For undergraduate students on accounting, they are not required to know Williamson, Coarse, Watts, Beaver, etc, but for graduate students, good familiarity on such classical works is to be a must. So with full experience of research can help the lecturer deliver a better and deeper understanding on these issues. For these purposes, Ph.D graduates is a good source to get the candidates of the lecturers of the issues on graduate levels.
This is only quite an initial consideration on the issue of employment for colleges, for any comments, you are welcome to follow and discuss.
GRE, a famous exam that is required by most graduate schools overseas, ranging from top universities like Harvard and MIT, to some ordinary schools, carries the dream of the youngsters who are willing of going abroad. Since its first in mainland of China in 1980s, millions of excellent young students and scholars has started their career. And for me, within the new generation of the dreamers, comes into the team as well with the first step of preparing for TOEFL and GRE.
Thanks to my solid foundation that I formed in high school and college, I get a reasonable result on TOEFL, though it is not very high, but acceptable considering my two week preparation without any guidance from the experienced takers. However, the good fortunate on my trial stops here. The experience that I obtained during the process of my GRE seems to be totally different, with one word in general, it is a experience full of depression, from the first attempt in June to this time. The only difference here is that the flu gets involved.
Preparing for the GRE do occupy quite plenty of spare time. For Chinese students like us, especially like me who don’t have that solid foundation on vocabulary, and little experience of living abroad that can help building up the routine of thoughts with the language of English. Unlike TOEFL that is focus on the basic vocabulary and grammar points referring to the ordinary usage of the language, GRE is a academic ability test, with the English as a medium. That is, if you are a GRE taker, you are expected to read and write as the native speaker does.
Taking the lesson from the failure in June, I focused on the vocabulary. After the hard-working of some months, my vocabulary is somewhat improved. Though I cannot correctly tell all the words but I can approximately figure their meanings. But then the flu comes again after the cold at the beginning of October. In a day my temperature was boosted to 39.8 degrees and was sent to the hospital by my dorm mates. I really appreciate their kindness in this very moment; it is their kindness that accompanies me in that two days that withdraws the homesick that a patient can always suffer from. While, my best female friend, tingting, came to my dorm mate and help me doing some cleanings. They are indeed my best friends permanently!
Now that the failure of my attempts on GRE is partially determined, I don’t want to be depressed again. Instead, I would prefer some alternatives besides going abroad. Though it is my initial power of learning English, which directly drove me the boost on my English since high school, but it is not the only purpose. With solid foundation on English that was built during the preparing of these two most difficult exams in mainland, I get some benefit on preparing for the graduate entrance exams in China. I wish I can successfully obtain a PhD degree in China, though it is not the best choice that I am longing for.
This post is quite occasional, I don’t even plan to discuss the GFW again since it can repeat my previous article on this related topic. It is Bill again, that told me some errors occur on my short link posted to the Twitter when updating my newly posted articles. Though due to some faults he temporarily closed his personal blog, he kept the professional perspicacity as a software engineering. Thanks for his help on helping me fix numerous faults since the start of this blog.
It is due to some political reasons, though I can hardly identify what they are indeed, that the world-famous Twitter was forbidden. But we were still able to use a gadget to login based on the Gmail. While today,I eventually find the gadget is forbidden as well. And the technology for this filtering is great improved. Any links with the word ‘twitter’ is definitely forbidden. And great piles of products that can be applied on Twitter are also enjoying the same treatment, including the short links, twitterfeed, are totally forbidden.
To solve this problem, some posted an article that describes the process of building up a private platform with Python based on Google App Engine. Here is a solution and introduction written by William Long (in Chinese). But which is a great trick that, the official site of Python was later forbidden as well. The reason why I call it as a trick is that Python is only a programming language, i really cannot explain the potential harm from a language to the security of the country. If anyone can provide a reasonable answer, do tell me!
I really don’t know if we are using the internet or just intranet. Since the beginning of this year, many great service has been forbidden, including Blogger.com, WordPress.com, Youtube.com, etc. And now, the Twitter and its byproducts are forbidden as well. Wish one day our Email and instant messaging can be forbidden as well, then there would be no child get addiction to the internet!
Windows 7, a next-generation operating system developed by Microsoft, has released its RTM versions some months ago and it is now also available to the MSDN and Technet subscribers as well as the volume licensing customers. Following the tradition for the computer fans that the latest versions of ISO can be easily obtained from a P2P source, either ed2k or BT torrent, I get my copy of ISO image some days ago. Thanks to the high transfer speed here on campus, I spend about 2 hours for downloading that.
As a end user of Windows 7 like us, especially for us, we have three different routines to get a valid key for our copy:
Purchase a package directly from Amazon.com, Microsoft.com, or some resellers as BestBuy, etc. But for most users in China, I suppose this won’t be a popular way since the high pricing of that package comparing to the local salary levels. More practically, most valid copies of operating systems are distributed through the channel of OEM, a specially plan for newly sold computers.
Register an account as the student membership of IEEE or ACM. A MSDN AA account will be awarded when you are submitting a valid application for such organizations. You are entitled to a copy of Windows 7 Professional (Key Only) with the price of 19 dollars annually. Comparing to the reselling price, this is much cheaper. But do remember that you can never try to use this authority for commercial purposes. But unfortunately that due to the numerous of applications that are not holding the valid student identity, this service has been temporarily down.
Volume License on Campus. It is another efficient way to use the Windows 7, you can connect to a KMS server for activating the system. But it is still unavailable in China.
Once you get the key, you can legally activate the copy of Windows 7 on your computer and use it without any limitation on function. And of course, you can either use some illegal methods for activating, or say cracking. But I won’t discuss it here. For more details, please try Google.
I am planning about to take a tutorial on this new system, then I installed it on my laptop. Everything works properly now, the issue on my Norton product has been successfully solved when updating it to the Norton Internet Security 2010 which perfectly supports Windows 7. But a new problem still occur, that is, there is no compatible client for logging into the campus network. I can hardly understanding why the manufacturer never try to develop and updating their clients keeping the pace with the development of software. And they only develop their clients on Windows. Never expect to logging into their systems with the system other than Windows, such as Mac and Linux.
It is quite amazing that I found an article that was written by myself about five years ago on some suggestions of how to improve the English to the young students. It was invited by my dorm mate Ding who used to be the dean of the department of study, the student union of dept. of Software Engineering and it was scheduled for a presentation. But I was not that confident to take it ( I was of no experience on lecturing at that time), and then it was posted as printed. 
This post is quite occasional, I don’t even plan to discuss the GFW again since it can repeat 
Windows 7
