Students Absorb Chinese Culture During July
 

Summer vacation for six Winthrop students meant teaching English to hundreds of Chinese youth. The Winthrop students spent the month of July in the China's Zhejiang province, south of Shanghai. They worked with middle school age children at various schools that offered the English lessons as part of a summer camp enrichment program. Some of the Chinese students barely knew the Roman alphabet; others had five years of the language and were quite fluent. The pilot program was a first for Winthrop and for the university's Chinese educational partner, Shanghai International Studies University. Accompanying the students were Susan Kress, Winthrop’s study abroad coordinator, and Peter Philips, an associate professor of biology. Kress found China a fascinating place to visit. “China is at a crossroads,” she said, speaking of the rapid modernization and construction taking place across the world’s most populous country. “There is evidence everywhere of Old China and New China. You can see an old wagon full of bamboo poles along a road, and right beside it, a Mercedes zooms by.” Ford Davis, a junior mass communication major from Rock Hill, loved the language, the people and the culture. The important Chinese cultural idea of face - gaining face, keeping face and saving face - was something to constantly consider, he said. He supervised the middle school students in playing games, such as soccer and baseball. The latter, the Chinese found difficult to grasp. For sophomore Lindsay Sacks of Aiken, S.C., the experience was a good way to gain classroom experience. “This was the first time I had a classroom to myself,” said Sacks, an education major who holds a Palmetto Fellow teaching scholarship. “The teaching aspect was a lot of fun.”

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