Recently, a four-week professional internship for 59 students majoring in English at School of English Language and Culture successfully concluded at Kid Castle SPACE
To ensure the smooth progress of the internship program, Sun Yunan, in charge of this internship, organized a mobilization meeting for the students in Education Direction of the 2022 English Major on October 21st, . Wang Yinghui, head of the English Department, and Li Donghua, head of the Educational Teaching and Research Office, attended the meeting. During the session, Sun Yunan provided a detailed introduction to Kid Castle SPACE, outlining the specific internship arrangements. Wang Yinghui emphasized the significant importance of this internship. She also mentioned plans to establish “order-oriented classes” in the future through deeper collaboration with Kidcastle, encouraging students to capitalize on this opportunity, study diligently, engage proactively, and fully use the internship to reflect on their personal career planning.
The morning specialized training can be called “intensive skill enhancement”: from designing frameworks for engaging English activity classes and handcrafting three-dimensional teaching aids that stimulate children's desire to explore, to repeatedly refining all-English classroom interaction processes and in-depth studying practical skills such as TPR (Total Physical Response) teaching method and phonics. The intensive and systematic training enabled the students to quickly solidify their teaching fundamentals and achieve a shift in role awareness.
The afternoon practical teaching sessions were full of challenges and surprises. The students showcased their strengths: some acted as “storytellers,” interpreting English picture books with vivid body language and expressive delivery, allowing children to feel the charm of the language while listening; others served as “game facilitators,” naturally integrating English knowledge points into interactions such as role-playing and group competitions, making the classroom atmosphere lively and effective.
Over the four weeks, the 59 students successfully completed various tasks including theme-based curriculum design, development of original teaching aids, and after-class tutoring. With their solid language proficiency, innovative teaching ideas, and strong sense of responsibility, they gained unanimous recognition from the teachers at Kid Castle SPACE.
This internship is an important measure for SELC to practice the educational philosophy of “theory empowers practice, and professionalism feeds back into education,” and a successful practice of the university-enterprise collaborative education mechanism. The college has always taken “understanding education, being innovative, and being able to tell Chinese stories well in English” as the goal of the English Education major, and this internship is a vivid practice of this training objective.
（Translated by Sun Yunan, Reviewed by Li Donghua）
