SHBS Electives

Chuman Lin, hostess of this event, told us that a total of 59 electives of various types would be offered in this semester, causing quite a stir among the audience in the auditorium.

Ms. Zagraya started the event by presenting her elective “Act Now” on the stage. She hoped that her elective could help improve students’ English pronunciation and intonation and their public speaking skills and finally boost their confidence through watching and imitating plays or movies.

Next, Mr. Frank presented his elective:“Building a Strong Mentality”, in other words, “to help students build a powerful inner world”. He said that he would teach students some relevant theoretical knowledge during his elective, help apply the theories they learned to a lot of practice, and ask them to share their personal experiences with the class. He hoped that his elective would help students boost their confidence, build their powerful inner world, and be more focused on areas they are interested in.

Mr. Joshua Smith presented two electives he would offer this semester. In his first elective class--“Podcasting Workshop”, students would have the opportunity to improve their listening and speaking skills by talking to each other, telling stories and uploading their recorded conversations and stories to the Internet. By presenting his second elective---“Critic’s Corner”, he encouraged students to recommend, to their relatives and friends, the novels, movies and songs they have read, combined with their opinions in the form of short comments, or publish them online to share with more people. These two electives are believed to be popular with a lot of students because they will play a large role in helping them learn English.

Then, each of the teachers who presented their electives on the stage in succession had his or own unique style. Some of them presented their electives with elaborate charts and accurate data, others with vivid words and fascinating animations, still others with visually impressive video clips to help students understand the nature and features of their elective courses.

In terms of course content, the electives to be offered this semester are considered to be a combination of Chinese and western elements and very inclusive. Students kept cheering for such interesting classes, such as special effect making in movies and 3D animation production offered by Mr. Harry, screenwriting and micro-film making offered by Ms. Wu, essay writing offered by Principal Chris, Chinese philosophy---Zhouyi offered by Mr. Tony Wang, bakery offered by Grace Yu, Ceramics offered by Ms. Jiang, music programming offered by Ms. Kong, academic competition courses like CTB and American Computer competition, Japanese and Korean, ect..

As a freshman, I had never seen so many interesting electives to choose from, and I was eager to try each of them. However, each student is allowed to take only one elective, so I would like to talk about two electives I preferred most.

The first one was Cantonese class presented by Mr. Dawn Xu. Cantonese is the most widely spoken language among overseas Chinese, and 120 million Chinese people speak the language worldwide. Mr. Dawn sang a part of a Cantonese song and an excerpt from a Cantonese opera in a humorous way and with rich feelings, and interacted with the students in Cantonese, causing quite a stir among the audience. I was impressed by the lively atmosphere and couldn’t help trying to learn this elegant-sounding Chinese dialect.

Besides, my second choice was Brazilian Jiu-jitsu offered by Ms. Marie. It's a martial art sport and Marie invited her coach to tell us more about it. In her class, students would not only learn fighting techniques, but also develop mobility and flexibility of their bodies. Students may feel the angles and pressure of their bodies through the using them as leverages, so that they may improve their self-defense ability. The coach showed a video in which the students fought intensivley when practising Brazilian Jiu-jitsu. Having watched the video, I was so excited that I couldn't wait to join in!

The presentation of electives came to an end with students talking and laughing. Starting next week, they would tap their own potential by attending different elective classes. We hope students will broaden their horizon, make progress and eventually get all-round improvement in their studies, artistic tastes and physical fitness by attending the electives.