YAO PAN

CHANGYAO (YAO) PAN 

is from China, and he studied in the ELI for 8 months.

Yao: “The ELI program does me a lot of favor for being prepared for an American University program. It helps me to improve my basic English skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing. What’s more important, it gives me the chance to know the model of American class in advance. American class is quite different from Chinese class, because it is more emphasize the interaction of students. In generally, teacher will not spend more than half of the class time by speaking alone, in opposition, most time is spent on the discussion among students or between students and teacher. Beside, this kind of interaction move quickly, which means you don’t have much time to organize your words in brain or raise your hand.   Usually, the class interaction not only will account for 30% of the final grade, but also effect to how teachers and other students think about your study ability and attitude. If you can’t get used to American class, it would be a lot of trouble to your study. However, the ELI program let me know and realize this important problem, and helped me deal with it by teaching me how to participate in the class discussion and communication.

I want to improve my listening and speaking skills, also want to learn how to efficiently participate in an American class. For the listening and speaking, the teachers and ELI staffs have provided a total-English environment and atmosphere for me. In addition, assisted by the advanced teaching methods and multi-media teaching resources, the progress is obviously made.

I like this ELI program not only because the courses, but also for some other reasons. On one side, the ELI office will organize many different kinds of extracurricular activities, such as visiting museum, taking part in volunteer project, enjoying movie festival, and watching Broadway show or various sports games. These diverse activities give us chances to know more about American cultures, and help us to get used the life style here. On the other side, this program allows us to use many resources of the university for free. For example, the library database, the language lab and the writing center. In the writing center, there are specialize professors and American students. They can help us edit our writing, improve the technical and ability of writing.

Pace University Campus lies in Downtown Manhattan. It’s just next to the City Hall and Brooklyn Bridge. I like wandering at the Brooklyn Bridge at night. On one hand, I can feel the prosperity of New York, one of the best world cities, and encourage myself to move forward. On other hand, I can relax by enjoying the beautiful night view of East River and Manhattan Island.

The reason for why New York City is so fascinating is because New York City belongs to the world more than belongs to America. In New York City, you can encounter the people from all over the world, feel different nations’ cultures, enjoy all kinds of food and touch the newest information, I believe that if someone can get adjust to the life in New York City, he /She could live in any other place in the world. Therefore, this makes the studying life in New York City more senseful.

Another thing I want to mention is that the ELI’s advantages of focusing on details. Remember the first day I registered to the program, a Chinese student assistant guided us to visit the campus. Because my poor English communication ability, I intend to speak with him in Chinese; but he replied me in English all the time. At that time I guess he must didn’t know how to speak Mandarin. However, later at another party, I found him is good at Mandarin, then I knew it is the rule at the ELI that the staff must speak English during the office time; and set up this rule is aim to  create a better English study environment for students.”

我是潘长耀，来自中国，已经在语言学院学习了8个多月。

语言项目对我上研究生课程有很大的帮助，除了提高听说读写这四项基础的学术技能之外，更重要的一点，是让我提前有机会接触美国课堂的教学模式。美国课堂跟中国课堂最大的不同是，美国课堂更注重于学生的参与。一节课上老师的发言时间通常不超过一半，更多的时间是学生之间以及学生与老师之间的发言和讨论。而且这样的互动是非常快的，你在脑子里组织语言的时间或举下手的功夫，讨论已经开始半天了。通常，课堂参与度会占到期末成绩的30%以上，而且还会影响到老师和同学对你学习能力，以及学习态度的看法，如果不能有效融入课堂，会给学习造成很大的压力。而语言项目让我更早的接触并了解到这一点，并通过教我何如何融入课堂讨论和交流，帮我解决这个难题。

在这个语言项目中，我除了注重于提高自己的英语听说能力，同时还想学习如何有效率的融入美国的课堂。就拿听力和口语两个方面来说，语言学校的老师和员工为我提供了一个全英语的学习环境和氛围，再加上先进的教学方法和多媒体教学资源的协助，很快就能感到明显的进步。

我喜欢这个语言项目。除了课程本身，还有其他各种原因。一方面，要是办公室会经常会组织一些课堂之外的活动，例如参观博物馆，参加志愿者项目，电影节，观看百老汇表演和各种运动比赛等等。这些为我们提供了很好的机会去了解美国的文化，并帮助我们融入适应这里的生活。另一方面，语言项目允许我们免费使用美国大学的很多资源，像是图书馆数据库，语音实验室还有写作中心。在写作中心，会有专门的教授和本美国本地的学生帮助你修改作文，帮你提高你的写作技巧和能力。

佩斯大学的曼哈顿校区位于下城区，就在市政厅和布鲁克林大桥隔壁。我最喜欢晚上漫步在布鲁克林大桥上，一方面可以感受到纽约这个国际大都市的繁华，并提醒自己要努力去融入这里；另一方面，欣赏东河和曼哈顿美丽的夜景可以放松一下自己。

纽约最有魅力的一点，在于她不仅属于美国，更是属于全世界的。在纽约，你可以遇到来自世界各地的人，感受到各种不同的文化，享受到不同的美食，了解到最新的资讯。我认为如果能够完全融入纽约的生活，那去到世界任何一个地方生活，都不会有难度。所以，这也让在纽约的学习更有意义。

这个语言学院是很注重细节的。记得我第一天到语言学院报到的时候，有个在办公室工作的亚洲学生带我们参观校园。因为我当时的英语交流水平还偏低，所以我试图跟他用中文交流，但他都坚持用英语答复。我那时候以为他不会讲中文。后来在其他聚会上才知道他中文也讲得很好，是因为语言学院规定在办公和教学期间，员工必须用英语跟学生交流，目的是为学习营造语言学习环境。