International Class Differences

In Mainland China, “international class”, or “international department”, are common names of high school programs that focus on helping high school students apply western universities. These programs are mostly in metropolis such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. Most of them are founded by regular high schools. Therefore, they are attached to regular high schools as special departments. Students in these program must obey high school rules in school as other regular students. The major difference between two system is course content. Instead of preparing for Chinese National Higher Education Entrance Examination, commonly known as Gaokao, courses of international department focus on English ability such as reading and writing skill, …show more content…
to 5:45 p.m. except two hours for lunch. I did not have to learn that many subjects in international department, so my schedule was empty after 3:30 p.m. The director of my school’s international department believed students should have enough time organized by themselves. She allowed us to organize our club, soccer team, and band. In fact, our club were the first club that completely organized by student in my high school. Regular students were not allowed and did not have enough time to organized a club. Thus, I played soccer and bands with my classmates every afternoon. In one afternoon I met the director of academic department in the music building when I was going to play band as usual. He stopped me asked why I always walked around with a guitar during class time. I told him I had no more class. He was surprised. Then he said “I know you guys are easy since you don’t have pressure from Gaokao, but it doesn’t mean that you can relax. Studying in international class also need to learning hard for a better college. You should spend more time on self study instead of playing music after class.” I was speechless. I could not even argue with him. In the next week my teacher told us in the class meeting that she got an order from the administrators that they would add one more class to our schedule called “self study”, …show more content…
Maybe the traditional Chinese way of teaching is more efficient for Gaokao, I am glad that I meet teachers like James. Compare to those regular teachers in my primary school and junior high school, teachers in international department are more impressive to me. I think their teaching styles is more efficient since they teach in an interesting