On August 5th when lotusleisurely bloomed with exquisite fragrance, the RightOempower English Teaching Team of the College of Foreign Languages convened with enthusiasm the first online Workshop of Teaching and Learning. This workshop was attended by more than 20 scholars including Zhang Wenzhong, Liu Binmei, Wang Dongyan, Zhang Chen and Hou Dianfeng as well as some postgraduate and doctoral students from the English Department, Li Yuping, Liu Jia and Liu Yali from the Department of College English, and teachers from other universities.
The “Workshop of Teaching and Learning of the RightOempower English Teaching Team” was initiated by Professor Zhang Wenzhong in Nankai University. Its members came from different universities such as Nankai University, Sichuan University, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin University of Finance and Economics, and Qujing Normal University. In line with the idea of “maintaining public-spiritedness and all-round capability, RightOempower, scholarship of teaching and learning and integrated development”, the seminar made and implemented plans in order to promote its advance.
This workshop was hosted by Dr Xu Chengping from Tianjin Normal University. Feng Ruiling, a teacher in Tianjin Normal University and doctoral student in Tsinghua University, reported results of her research on teaching with the title “Influencing Factors of EFL Learners’ Acceptance of Automatic Scoring Tools: Structural Equation Modelling Analysis.” And Zhai Yu, a doctoral student of Nankai University, presented her research entitled “On Problems of Foreign Languages Teaching and Practice in Chinese Universities.”
Following these two reports, many valuable suggestions were proposed in the question and discussion session. For example, samples of research are supposed to be representative and extensive with an appropriate size; the number of questions of each kinds of foreign languages teaching and practice should be balanced as much as possible in questionnaire designing; and research questions should be clear and the logic should be rigorous in order to write a profound and elaborate paper of higher reliability. These two speakers said that they deepened their understandings in the discussion and would further improve their studies.
Finally, Professor Zhang Wenzhong, the team leader, affirmed their reports, pointed out the deficiencies, and offered constructive suggestions on the succinctness of research problems, widening research horizons, innovating research methodologies and designing research plans so as to help improve members’ teaching wisdom and level of scholarship.
The first “Workshop of Teaching and Learning of the RightOempower English Teaching Team” lasted for 1 hour and 30 minutes. The participants gained a lot and were still yearning for more. They all expressed their willingness to better carry out tasks in RightOempower teaching and research.
