New school year for five overseas students
Under the epidemic, the usual lively Leeds streets became quiet and deserted.
Photo by Wang Yifei
Yan Rui is studying online language courses provided by the school at home to prepare for the upcoming official school start.
During the first half of the epidemic, Wang Zihan had only a few offline courses left in Australia.
Li Bowen (left), who is studying at the Ukrainian National Metallurgical University, is with his classmates.
It has been more than a month since the beginning of the new school year. Facing the overseas study and life under the epidemic situation, how much do students adapt to the situation?
Recently, our reporter interviewed 5 Chinese students who are welcoming the new semester. Some of them are abroad and some are taking online courses in China.
Let us take a look at their school stories during the epidemic.
Difficulty resuming classes overseas
Affected by the strong rebound of the second wave of the epidemic in Europe, the only offline course of Wang Yifei, a freshman at the University of Leeds in the UK, was also cancelled.
Her major is film photography and media. She arrived in Leeds more than a year ago and started her preparatory school. She officially enrolled this fall.
Although the person is abroad, the class format is also to watch the video of the pre-recorded course.
In life, Wang Yifei goes out to make purchases once a week and stays in his room the rest of the time.
She lived in the on-campus dormitory, which originally contained five single-room suites. Affected by the epidemic, she and another Chinese student who was studying for a Ph.
On the streets of Leeds, there are many more people wearing masks than when the epidemic first broke out.
In the planning of studying abroad, Wang Yifei originally planned to participate in more club activities, meet new friends, and apply for company internship opportunities in his sophomore year.
Now that the plan had to be adjusted, she turned her attention to some online internships.
Wang Yifei said: “The number of applicants for these internships is very large and the competition is under great pressure. It can be seen that many students are eagerly looking for opportunities to improve their practical ability. I have also been paying close attention to online internship positions in the industry.”
At the beginning of September, on the curriculum of Li Bowen, a senior student majoring in foreign economic management at the National Metallurgical University of Ukraine, some small classes that were less enrolled and resumed offline teaching were markedly marked.
However, only a few weeks later, affected by the worsening of the new crown pneumonia epidemic in Ukraine, the university temporarily switched to online learning.
Prior to this, his school used different grades to start classes in batches and staggered classes to avoid crowds and reduce the risk of virus cross-infection in offline courses.
In the local area, some restaurants have struggled to recover under the epidemic, and dine-in can only be seated separately. Some closed indoor dining and only provide open-air service.
Li Bowen has become accustomed to life in the Ukraine epidemic. Entering his graduation year, he needs to complete a series of tasks such as completing thesis, applying for an internship, and inspecting target universities at the graduate level.
"I can't change the epidemic situation. All I can do is to advance my academic plan step by step, step by step, and try to minimize the adverse effects." Li Bowen said.
The quality of online teaching is impaired
Wang Zihan is a sophomore student majoring in banking and finance at Monash University in Australia. She has just returned to China and returned to her hometown in Ningxia.
In the past few months, she has finished one semester of online courses in Australia, and now, after returning to China, she continues to start her second semester of online courses.
According to Wang Zihan, except for some majors that require laboratory equipment are allowed to enter the campus, the courses of the other majors of Monash University are adjusted to online teaching.
Compared with offline classes, online classes have a shorter teaching time. In the past one and a half hours of small class, some became about 45 minutes after going online.
Wang Zihan couldn't hide his worries about whether the compressed class content would shrink in knowledge, lack gold content, and even affect his diploma recognition after graduation.
"Some online courses are not very efficient. When face-to-face lectures are not possible, teachers cannot understand each student's understanding of knowledge. Most of the international students in our class are Chinese students, who don’t like to ask questions very much. Most of the time, the teacher is talking, the interaction effect is not good, and it is difficult for students to fully concentrate when listening online alone." Wang Zihan said.
Wang Yifei also said that his learning effectiveness was objectively discounted.
"I don't think I have a learning experience that is equivalent to tuition. Some highly practical photography courses have not been converted from offline to online, but cancelled, without teacher guidance, let students learn by themselves. Frankly speaking, It’s hard to be satisfied."
At the same time, the mentality of some international students is also changing.
"How long will the epidemic last? How long will this closed state last? When can I return to Australia and start a normal study life? These things make people worry. Many international students are not in a good state of mind, some students even I have a tendency to be depressed. I myself was unable to fall asleep all night before returning to China, thinking about these things over and over again." Wang Zihan said.
Balance life, family and schoolwork
In June of this year, Liu Zhongyuan, a computer science student at McMaster University in Canada, received a notice from the school that all courses in the new school year will be conducted in the form of online courses.
Domestic online courses are safer and lower in cost, but the quality of learning is inevitably affected; if you go to Canada, the potential risk of epidemic prevention is even greater.
After weighing the comparison, Liu Zhongyuan decided to stay in China to accept remote teaching, which is also the common choice of many Chinese students around him.
Since the school officially started on September 7, in order to coordinate with the school's teaching schedule, Liu Zhongyuan "outs at night" and passed "Canada time" according to the schedule.
In Dongying, Shandong, Yan Rui, a graduate student at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom, has also consciously adjusted to a "Man City schedule" in the past two weeks.
He studied at the University of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences as an undergraduate, and his postgraduate has applied for a major in Sociology at the University of Manchester, which will start on October 26.
In order to better adapt to the teaching rhythm in the UK, Yan Rui signed up for a two-week language course in an online seminar.
According to him, some of the classmates also choose to go to the UK for online classes in order to better adapt to the local culture, language and learning atmosphere.
Talking about the effects of online classes, Yan Rui said that self-study ability is also an important ability to be cultivated at the postgraduate level. This requires students to overcome the adverse influence of the outside world and set their attitude toward learning.
"Learning at home, with the help of the network environment, a lot of learning materials can be easily obtained. So the external environment is only part of the influencing factors, in the final analysis, it depends on the students' own level of care." Yan Rui said.
In addition to studying, life and rest are completely different from family members, interfere with each other, and over time will bring conflicts.
"One day and two days are fine, but it will really affect the family members over time. They will feel uncomfortable, and their normal living habits and rhythms will be disrupted." Liu Zhongyuan said helplessly.
"I can only find ways to overcome difficulties as much as possible, and balance the relationship between life, family and school as much as possible. I think this is also a good opportunity to cultivate my problem-solving ability."
Sun Yahui