Update from Gansu
Gulang Travel Blog
› entry 2 of 3 › view all entries
Greetings from
I’ve been here for about a week now in the beautiful and mountainous Gulang. We have student volunteers from

TECC focuses on both technology education as well as English education. As such, we are holding both technology and English classes at the
The teaching experiences of the teachers are varied. I’ve met teachers who have only been teaching for one year, to some who have been teaching for over a decade.

On the first day when we had the opening ceremony, we asked each teacher what he or she would like to learn or achieve during this summer institute. The majority of teachers want to improve their English speaking and listening skills. The teachers for the most part know the basic rules and structures of the English language, but they still find it difficult to express themselves and communicate to their students in English. One teacher expressed dissatisfaction that her students don’t understand her when she speaks English in the classroom. Many also seek to learn new and interesting teaching methods to use in their own classes.

We have all been working hard to help improve those areas. For example, to improve speaking skills, we did a travel agent activity where groups of teachers were assigned a Chinese city and had to persuade the rest of the class to visit there. To improve listening, we had the teachers watch an episode of Desperate Housewives and then act out various common scenarios, such as a family dinner or parents at a supermarket. We have also worked on reading and writing, by having them read articles from Newsweek and The Economist and then write summaries. In the next few days, we are planning on refining grammar skills and introducing some new styles of teaching, as well as continuing to improve speaking and listening skills.
