On the evening of October 24th, the English Department, in collaboration with the School English Association, held the 12th English Corner Activity in the academic lecture hall on the 11th floor of the Xuehai Building. The activity was organized and planned by the SY2101 branch of the Communist Youth League, with the theme of "All about Travel". Ms. Yao Wei, Director of the English Department, Ms. Zhou Dan, and foreign teacher Angela Lu attended the event to provide guidance.
The activity was divided into four sessions: Pictionary (Draw and Guess), Word Chain, True or False, and Travel Story Sharing. In the first session, a total of three teams participated, with three members in each team. The game required one person to draw and two to guess. During the game, all participants showcased their English vocabulary skills, with the winning team guessing eight words in less than three minutes. The game lit up everyone’s enthusiasm on the spot, prompting more and more students to take an active part.
The second session was the Word Chain, which comprised three rounds, with eight participants in each round. Each student was required to think of a word starting with the last letter of the word given by the previous student, and this cycle repeated. Initially, students could instantly come up with the right words. However, as the game progressed, some students struggled and were eliminated. When the game came to the second half, the response time was shortened from five seconds to three seconds. The students started employing various strategies, such as saying a word that ends with “x” or words that all end with “e”, which further escalated the tense atmosphere. The students who remained on the stage until the end were the winners in this session.
The last session was True or False which focused on reasoning and writing abilities. Each group was required to write a story about travel, which could be either real or fictional, but there had to be details as the basis for speculating its authenticity. A total of seven stories were then shared, such as traveling to Xiamen and taking 70,000 steps in one day, encountering Liu Xiang unexpectedly in Beijing and taking a photo with him, witnessing a cheetah hunting in Africa, and visiting the Yueyang Tower in Changsha. The authenticity of these stories sparked waves of speculation. After the audience finished their guesses, the person who shared the story would reveal whether it was real, triggering laughter and amazement. They said, "We really took 70,000 steps in one day," "I didn't go to Beijing at all," "My mom told me many times, so it must be true," and "The Yueyang Tower is not in Changsha."
Hearing these stories that were either real or fabricated, the audience's enthusiasm to share authentic travel experiences surged. Two students then shared theirs, one recounting ten days spent across multiple countries in Southeast Asia, the other recalling his travel in Xiamen.
This activity focused on travel, aiming to practice students’ language skills in listening, speaking, reading and writing. In a joyful atmosphere, students enriched their knowledge about tourism and also improved their English proficiency.
(Contributors: Hu Songjie, Lu Jing, Zhang Jiarui | Editor: Yu Bu, Yao Wei | Reviewer: Dan Haijian)
