On 12th, March, “Less Commonly Used Language with a New Starting Point” course in Nankai University formally began classes, 16 student lecturers majoring in French, German, Japanese, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Arabic and 21 teaching assistants brought both professional and interesting language courses to more than 200 enthusiasts for foreign languages. This serial “New Starting Point” courses were held by Academic Instruction Center of Educational Administration in Nankai University and Youth Volunteer Service and Social Practice Center of College of Foreign Languages.
In the class, lecturers and teaching assistant of each class cooperated actively, adopted various forms like ppt, songs and videos, organized class exercise such as shadow reading and oral communication. Li Zixuan enrolled in Spanish course expressed that he was always interested in Spanish culture so he signed up this course free of charge. The main content of the first class was introduction and pronunciation. He felt good about this and said that he would attend the subsequent classes on time. Zhang Jingyu, a post-graduate student in Russian Department who has been a “New Starting Point” lecturer for three years, stated that “It is a very happy process to convey knowledge. I will continue to make an effort to prepare lessons and convey the content which I want to share the most to the students in Russian class, helping them step into a wonderful world of Russian language.” Liu Xinrui, a teaching assistant in the Italian Department in the class of 2020 also expressed the affirmation of the “Less Commonly Used Language with a New Starting Point” activity: “‘Less Commonly Used Language with a New Starting Point’ provides a platform with lecturers, teaching assistants and students to have a new experience and offers more people a key to the door of a new world.”
It is reported that “New Starting Point” less commonly used language project, as a brand volunteer service project of College of Foreign Languages, has been held for 12 consecutive years. This activity provides all the foreign language enthusiasts in the university with the opportunity of experiencing foreign language culture and ability improvement through inviting outstanding seniors to deliver lectures as lecturers. All the lecturers and teaching assistants are carefully selected and trained during the pre-service period with regular weekly classes. The course aims to better meet the diverse language learning demands of students in different majors in the university and promote the further integration of foreign language learning and the advanced study of each subject.
