The spring semester of 2020 came as scheduled, not later than any previous new semester. During the epidemic prevention and control of COVID-19, College English classes began online as scheduled on February 10, owing to the unified deployment of CUG and teachers’ careful planning and preparation in the early stage.

During the special period of the outbreak of COVID-19, online teaching was carried out in such a special way. The present “war without smoke of gunpowder” brought teachers and students too much meditation and insights in numerous aspects, for example, in life, awe, responsibility, and gratitude. College English is one of the public courses with the longest teaching hours and the largest number of students in CUG, so how can teachers efficiently complete College English courses on time according to the teaching plan, and how can they, meanwhile, pay attention to the psychological state of students, direct them in thoughts, touch them in soul, and share patriotic feelings and the strength of China with them? This was the problem considered most by teachers from the “ideological and political course” team of the School of Foreign Languages before College English classes started.

After communication and discussion for many times, English teachers guided students to deeply experience the voice of China and encouraged them to talk about fighting the epidemic in English through a variety of online classroom activities, so as to convey the confidence and strength of “winning the war”.

When assigning oral homework, Professor Hu Zhihong carefully selected the English news related to the battle against COVID-19, as well as the English reports from WHO and other countries about praising China’s vigorous efforts in fighting the epidemic. She also guided students from 2018 Geosciences Pilot Class to reflect and express their feelings in English while reading these reports. Then students shared their thoughts in various ways such as in texts, audios and videos to express their ideas that they would never be afraid, and the Chinese nation would surely win the final victory to beat the epidemic under the backing of our strong and prosperous country.

When teaching students from the Base for Resource Exploration Engineering, Professor Zhang Lingli gave them a topic --- “Fighting COVID-19--- for them to talk about their own feelings and to tell the stories about people’s  efforts to control the epidemic. Professor Zhang then recorded students’ affectionate speeches by videos, which got warm responses from students. Some shared their parents’ stories about combating the epidemic, and others explained the route of virus transmission and protection methods. Each video got numerous clicks in the online class group. In this way, students communicated with each other, encouraged each other and were optimistic to beat the epidemic!

Integrating the theme of “Hero” into English teaching, Associate Professor Liu Min talked about various heroes from the famous people such as national heroes, great leaders and battle heroes in brilliant traditional Chinese culture to countless ordinary civilian heroes around us, like the hospital nurses, police officers, community volunteers, taxi drivers and couriers in the process of fighting the epidemic., By sharing the story of Cai Yankai, a student from 2019 ESS Experimental Class who donated many protective suits, Professor Liu enlightened the students with the ideas that “heroism is latent in every human soul” and “a hero is a man who does what he can!”. Thus, in such a special period, students should try their best to do everything well, and everyone can be the hero of themselves and others.

When talking about the prejudice and discrimination in the Cross-Cultural Communication Course, Ms. Li Pin mentioned that in the early stage of the epidemic, many countries mistakenly believed that the epidemic originated from China and had “prejudice” against China. Therefore, she asked students to make an official response to it through producing English posters themed by “Fight epidemic and reject discrimination”. This class assignment not only mobilized students’ enthusiasm to learn and use English, but also greatly enhanced their patriotism. With rich imagination and elaborate designs, students presented a series of posters featured with novel forms and rich contents.

Postscript of CUGer

During the epidemic, the “ideological and political course” team of the School of Foreign Languages, with the help of these colorful online teaching forms, guided students to experience the great solidarity spirit, to convey the voice of China in fighting the epidemic, and to appreciate the institutional advantages of socialism with Chinese characteristics.

Winter will eventually pass

And spring is sure to come

Let us

Work together to fight the epidemic

Hear the wind sing and wait for flowers to bloom.
 

Photo & Text| Liu Min

Text Editing| Lei Gongming, Sun Jiarui
Proofreading| Chen Huawen, Liu Yanhui