Diversified English strategies, cross-subject integrated activity teaching, and building an all-round English campus

Kiangsu - Chekiang College (Kwai Chung) is committed to providing high-quality English education, actively optimizing school-based curriculum, improving classroom learning and teaching effectiveness, and providing different English learning activities and opportunities so that students can break out of the textbook framework and use English extensively in diversified campus life. With its excellent and diverse English courses and activities, the school has successfully created a strong English atmosphere, which has led to students' outstanding performance in public examinations in recent years. Principal Dr. Liang Jianwen firmly believes that an international English learning environment can promote students' enthusiasm for learning and broaden their international horizons. To this end, the school not only invests resources to hire more foreign English teachers, but also regularizes English drama education, allowing students to immerse themselves in an all-English learning environment through experiential learning and stimulate their language potential.

The whole school participates in an English musical to enrich contextual learning experiences

In order to enhance students' interest and self-confidence in English, the school promotes collaborative teaching between English and music subjects, combining English with musicals. Through situational teaching, students can gradually improve their English listening, speaking, reading and writing skills while participating in musicals. English musical theater education is different from traditional school-based classrooms. The school hopes to guide students to become interested in learning English in a relaxed and interesting way, and at the same time, through various positions on the stage, students can realize their potential. Students who participated in the musical reacted enthusiastically. They believed that the musical's relaxed perspective not only reduced the learning pressure, but also made them more confident when using English. Therefore, English musicals have successfully created a relaxed and pleasant English context, naturally integrating English into life, which is of great benefit to language learning.

Students have a very high degree of participation in the entire production of the English musical. From script creation, dialogue conception, stage design, performance costumes, repertoire interpretation, etc., all are handled by the students, creating a "whole-school participation" learning atmosphere. The teacher will assist, understand the students’ ideas, and help them improve their English scripts. Through the process of performing and writing scripts, students will learn more English vocabulary, thereby cultivating their interest in reading, becoming more confident in speaking, and daring to express themselves in front of the whole school. Principal Liang said with a smile, "We include a musical performance in every graduation ceremony to showcase students' learning achievements at school. It not only allows graduates to reminisce about campus life, but also adds color to their final high school career. Many parents were also moved by their children's performance on the stage and applauded warmly to show their approval.

Distinctive English Teaching Policy Immersive Language Learning

Principal Liang said: "When considering formulating a school-wide English teaching policy, we hope to build an authentic, English-led learning environment and implement the concept of teaching students in accordance with their aptitude to reduce learning differences." In order to provide an immersive English learning environment, the school has promoted English to different subjects since the junior high school level. Our school's science subjects from Form 1 to Form 3 have been fully taught in English, and the mathematics courses in the elite junior high school classes are also taught in English. At the high school level, a number of subjects taught in English are offered, including mathematics, biology, chemistry, physics and introduction to business, accounting and finance. The school's English-based teaching model has steadily improved the learning level of secondary one freshmen, which will help them transition to university courses in the future. In addition, the English Department has specially designed school-based teaching materials and "English Learning Kit" for students from Form 1 to Form 6 to comprehensively consolidate students' English foundation and self-study ability.

Group teaching by level to optimize learning and teaching effectiveness

In order to cater for the different learning needs of students and increase the opportunities for each student to participate in the classroom, the school continues to invest resources to optimize classroom arrangements, increase teaching manpower, and divide English classes from Form 4 to Form 6 into three groups to teach in two classes, optimizing the teacher-student ratio and comprehensively caring for students' English development. At the same time, each grade also adopts diversified teaching methods. There are two classes per week for Form 3 to Form 6 in the "big class" mode. Through teacher collaboration and cross-class student exchanges, students' conversation and listening skills are cultivated when they come into contact with unfamiliar environments and objects. Teacher Lin Huiping, head of the English Department, added: "When students conduct cross-class oral examination training, they can train their self-regulation and adaptability, enhance their self-confidence in facing examinations, and express themselves at their best. Therefore, students' conversational performance in public examinations in recent years has been quite outstanding."

Recruit additional foreign English teachers to build an international learning environment

Principal Liang is committed to creating a pleasant environment for students to learn English, and attaches great importance to the quality of English teachers. To this end, the school has specially recruited foreign English teachers and arranged for them to enter the classroom to collaborate with local teachers. Three full-time foreign teachers will also be responsible for elite classes and group conversation classes for Form 1 to Form 3. At the same time, through communication with foreign teachers outside the classroom, students can get in touch with the living cultures of different countries, absorb more English knowledge, and thus exercise and improve their English ability.

Promote English reading and use and apply English in daily life

The school actively promotes interdisciplinary teaching to develop students’ knowledge, skills and ability to synthesize information. The English Department regularly conducts cross-disciplinary collaborations with other subjects. For example, it collaborates with the Science Department and Geography Department to organize multi-disciplinary interdisciplinary learning activities to connect different subject areas and provide students with opportunities to practice their knowledge. In addition, the school has optimized the curriculum structure and reorganized the home economics subject into the "Technology and Living" course to train students' learning skills, reading and writing skills, and life skills to build problem-solving abilities and integrate knowledge. Principal Liang pointed out: "The course incorporates information technology elements to improve the practicality of the content and cultivate students' 21st century generic abilities. The cross-disciplinary collaboration effectively breaks the limitations of the inherent framework of the subject, and students can develop analytical skills, a spirit of inquiry, and improve their English reporting skills."

The English subject team is also committed to enriching students' learning experience and providing a variety of extracurricular activities so that students can learn through games and be exposed to authentic English for daily life. Every Wednesday, the English subject team holds an English Campus TV broadcast for students; Thursday Morning Reading is held to allow students to showcase their talents in front of the entire school audience and develop their reading habits. The school also regularly holds "Saturday English Day Camps" for Form One and Form Two, and foreign teachers organize different workshops, such as learning yoga in English, ceramics, movie appreciation, etc., to create a relaxed and enjoyable English learning environment for students, so that students can practice and deepen their English knowledge and skills in daily life. In addition, the school has always encouraged students to participate in the inter-school recital festival and practice their learning achievements. This year, students also participated in three projects: English solo recitation, drama dialogue and Shakespeare passages, connecting knowledge with real situations through recitation.

"Big hands holding small hands" to improve career planning

The school is well aware of the importance of test-taking experience and skills, so it has promoted the test-taking strategy of "big hands and small hands". Principal Liang invites alumni who have entered the university as mentors to teach students test-taking skills in a systematic way. Through excellent school-based courses and careful guidance from alumni tutors, students’ English proficiency has been significantly improved. After all the teachers' dedicated teaching and the students' six years of hard work, their excellent learning results are also reflected in the DSE results. The students' improvement in English proficiency is outstanding in the same district. While students achieve excellent results, the school also helps students establish career plans and guides them to set goals. With rich experience in public examination grading and big data analysis, the school accurately analyzes each student's performance and helps students move towards their ideal path.