Closing the Gap on the Learning Curve: Tips from a Language Teacher studying at the HNC

Some of you might remember Rebecca from our post introducing the banwei. This week, one of our resident banwei, and first-year SAIS-Bologna student, gives us tips on how to close the gap on the learning curve during our first semester at the HNC. 

Before starting my studies at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center, I was pursuing my first master’s in Teaching English as a Second Language (TESOL) at California State University, Los Angeles. As teacher-in-training, I spent the first year of my program learning about the English language in detail: from the finer points of its grammar to the many ways one can pronounce “t” (of which there are over seven just in North American English alone). In my second year I learned more about using language in academia, teaching practicums, and how to teach language virtually and online, completing my own practicum in an online-hybrid course on writing. 

With HNC classes online thanks to the pandemic, my peers and I have found ourselves in an interesting language environment that goes as far as our computer screens. While HNC classes are not language classes (rather, they are content classes held in the target language), I find that there are still many language-related tips I have from being both a language teacher and learner that have helped me in my first month of studies that I’d like to share below.

 

Target language course tips:

• Keywords and Repetition

HNC teachers (intentionally or unintentionally) set up their syllabus in a way that they are often going over related topics at the same time. For you (the learner) this is great because repetition is one of the best ways for you to retain the specialized vocabulary used in the program.

 

• Put aside a lot of time to read

In your first language you may be able to get away with skimming the course readings 5 minutes before class (we’ve all done it), but you’ll find that trying such in your second language will be a test in futility. This is largely because the biggest repetition skill of all is reading. You start reading your first language as early as 3 years old and you devour hundreds of thousands and millions of words before you get to the point where you can skim for main ideas. With your HNC readings, make sure to give yourself adequate time (at least a few hours) to complete your target language readings. 

 

• Focus on listening to and interacting with the lecture rather than note taking

When you’re in lecture for the first time, you may find yourself running a marathon trying to take notes on everything that the professor is saying, and thereby be caught off guard when the professor calls on you to answer a question. Class time is one of the few times you get to interact with your materials outside of homework so, outside of the professor highlighting that something is important or bringing up something that was unclear in the readings, engage with lecture. This way you can practice talking about your topics, which is different than reading, writing, or listening to them, and in some ways the hardest of the four skills.

 

 

Shenzao and Beyond: Kickstarting Your Career at the HNC

First-year MAIS student and Career Services student worker Albert Heidecke reflects on the unique career opportunities that students have access to once they join the Hopkins-Nanjing Center (HNC).

深造 shenzao.  A great word that I heard many times in the first few weeks of starting at the HNC. It’s a response to a question that everyone wants to ask:  “Why did you come to the HNC?” 

Shenzao, literally translated to English as something like “deep creative” is typically used to describe efforts in pursuing one’s study – but it’s not the only reason why we’re at the HNC. The fact is, shenzao is not a means to an end; we’re here to develop valuable skills that will aid us in our professional careers. The HNC community is home to students interested in a wide range of interests pertaining to everything from climate strategies to Indo-Pacific security. Here’s the rub: how are we supposed to take advantage of all the great opportunities that are open to us HNC students? 

I’m a first year MAIS student and I’ve also happened to pick up a work-study opportunity at the Career Center. In only the short time that I’ve been at the HNC, I’ve seen first-hand the amount of work that the Career Center puts into supporting HNC students and the larger SAIS community. 

There’s something that prospective students need to know: no one is going to find your dream job or internship for you, but Career Services is there to provide you with assistance of all kinds. Don’t know how to write a resume? Or a cover letter? Or do you just need help brainstorming potential fields of interest? Career Services can help you do all these things, and more. My favorite part is that it saves students’ valuable time, i.e., more time to read - which you do a lot of at the HNC. 

I’ve probably spent hundreds of hours slouched over my computer, endlessly searching for that one internship that I’m both qualified for and genuinely interested in. Sometimes, you don’t even know what you’re looking for. Sometimes that perfect opportunity is just hiding in a corner of the internet that you haven't opened yet. It’d be nice if there was somebody who was paid to hunt down job opportunities...

That’s where Career Services comes in. Career Services regularly compiles recent job openings and shares them via email with students in SAIS that have expressed interest in that given field or concentration. Here’s the thing: you should always check this list, even if you’re not actively looking for a new opportunity. Students at the HNC and SAIS can sign up for any number of these email lists. They’re fantastic tools for developing comprehensive views of the opportunities in particular regions, industries, or with certain employers. The email lists can save students many hours of research. 

Career Services also facilitates excellent opportunities to network with employers and alumni. My coworker at Career Services this year is Nathan Rose – a master networker who just recently organized a Finance Career Trek. This is another time-saver. At HNC, you can leverage these events as opportunities to network more than you ever have and gain valuable insight into wide range of industries. Students are presented with ample opportunities to utilize the HNC as a springboard into their career. HNC and greater SAIS is the epicenter of an extensive alumni network and fantastic Career Services Center that spans all three of the SAIS campuses. 

So, when someone asks you why you came to the HNC, you need not only say that you’re here to shenzao – you’re also here to develop your career, and this is the right place to do so.  

Alumni Book Chat with Brian Linden: Redefining Diplomacy: One Village at a Time

On November 4th, Co-Director Adam Webb hosted a discussion with HNC ’88 alumnus Brian Linden, the co-founder of the Linden Centre in Xizhou, China. This event was an excellent opportunity to hear Brian Linden introduce his forthcoming book, Redefining Diplomacy: One Village at a Time, and to hear about his fascinating life as he became interested in China and the Hopkins-Nanjing Center. Brian Linden was part of the HNC's second cohort. His book traces what he describes as an “unlikely journey from working-class America to China.”

Adam first asked Brian to elaborate on becoming interested in China and attending the HNC. Brian replied:  “I am very honored to have spent that one year at the Hopkins Nanjing Center, and it still resonates. I got a great education, but I also met my future wife there, an Asian American studying Mandarin in Nanjing. When I say I am lucky, I use that term because I come from a working-class background. I had no exposure to China at all. In fact, the reason I came to China was because I could not identify it on a map.”

 

Brian had put himself through community college through cleaning carpets:  “I would rush every morning to the grocery store and rent a carpet cleaning machine, put it in the back of a van, and go out and clean carpets."

One day in 1983, in Chicago, he cleaned the carpets of a house for a University of Chicago professor, who owned a very large world map. Every place the professor had visited was marked with a red flag, such as Europe and Mexico. After about an hour of cleaning, the professor asked Brian for a favor - “Hey buddy, could you put this flag in China? I just got back from China.” Brian continued by saying, “in 1983, very few people were traveling to China,” so the professor was very proud to have had this opportunity. However, Brian apologetically told the professor he could not do it because he did not know where to find China on the map. After discovering that Brian was not joking, the professor sat down with Brian, and for the first time in Brian’s life, “someone educated” questioned him about his life choices.

“He said, is this all you want to do for the rest of your life, clean carpets? I told him I do not have many options right now; I am going through night school trying to make it.” 

The moment he had with the professor was the beginning of his journey to China. A month later, while attending night school at Northeastern Illinois University, he saw a poster advertising a scholarship to study in China. Brian applied and two months later received a call from the Chinese Embassy inviting him to study at Beijing University. Brian could not believe that they had chosen him to participate and asked, “Why? Did anyone else apply?” He had told them that he did not know anything about China, and they said it was precisely for that reason they chose him. They were looking for people like Brian, who were enthusiastic to learn about China.
 
After arriving in Beijing in 1984, Brian never attended a class at Beijing University because on the second day, he was sought out by a Beijing film studio company looking to cast a foreigner as a lead actor - one of the first movies since 1949 to do this. The movie took three months, and then he was interviewed by CBS news, who later offered him a job.

 

He first heard about the Hopkins-Nanjing Center during a talk when he was with CBS News and was amazed by the HNC, specifically, that it was the first program in China where international students could live and attend class with a Chinese roommate. 

“I would never have been to the HNC…My life would have been completely different had it not been for that professor at the University of Chicago, had it not been for the gratitude, and I mean the graciousness of the Chinese Embassy giving me the scholarship and for everyone who has kind of, in some ways, given me opportunities that were no way commensurate with my pre-China background. So, ever since then, I evolve to in some way, express gratitude to China.”

 

I could not help but be captivated by Brian's story. During his time at CBS, he interviewed Deng Xiaoping and other Chinese national figures. In 1987-1988, he spent a year completing the HNC certificate program, and then returned to the US and attended Stanford University, where he obtained a Master of Arts in Asian history. He stayed in America for 15 years until 2004, after which he moved back to China with his wife Jeanee and their two sons. His goal was to build a rural retreat for actual cultural exchange between visitors and local people in China. After spending an itinerant two years seeking a site, they eventually settled in Xizhou, near Dali in Yunnan Province, and so in 2008, the Linden Centre was founded.

 

Brian and Jeanee were very much inspired by Brian's emotional connection to China. Having respect for the country, he was hoping to build a platform that would enhance China’s soft power and allow people to see China in a slightly different manner through integration with local Chinese villages and communities. All the staff in the Linden Centre are from the local community. There are free tours and workshops that the visitors can participate in to connect with the community. One example is an architecture tour that allows people to understand the importance of the local community’s buildings to the region’s culture. In a workshop, local people can share their hobbies with the guests. As a result, 50% of the buildings are public spaces for learning and interaction. Staying at the Centre is a cultural and educational experience.

 

Brian dedicates his upcoming book, which will be published in Chinese, to the Chinese people. It is “in many ways, a love story about a person whom this country has enchanted, and it talks a little about that, and how I feel I am such a better person because of China.” I think many HNC students feel the same sentiments as Brian, as many of us feel a significant connection with China while we study at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center and share an unforgettable, rich bicultural and bilingual learning space. 

Listen to the entire chat here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKjiupXhvlw 

Written by Elizabeth Gonzales 

 

Career Diversity: A behind the scenes look at the HNC Finance Career Trek

Hopkins-Nanjing Center (HNC) Career Services student worker and first-year MAIS student Nathan Rose gives us the inside scoop on the lessons learned from planning one of the famous HNC Career Treks. 

              

Hi! My name is Nathan Rose, and aside from being a normal HNC student I also work at the Career Services office. This month I was involved with organizing the HNC China Virtual Finance Panel. In organizing this event, I learned a lot about the possibilities HNC-ers can take advantage of.

First, when researching which alumni to reach out to, I was surprised to find out how many different places and sectors HNC alumni find themselves in. If one looks at the HNC LinkedIn Page, it is certainly clear that alumni tend to find work in state institutions (many, for example, gravitate towards the State Department). This is understandable, as the State Department and Ministry of Foreign Affairs seem like natural choices for students pursuing a degree in International Studies. However, looking beyond careers in the public diplomacy sphere, we see that HNC students pursue careers in a wide variety of fields. 

According to the HNC LinkedIn Page, there is a strong representation of alumni who have built careers in the business development sector. Other popular sectors are Education, Community and Social Services, Research, Media and Communication, and Finance. To use a more anecdotal example, I remember one of the first career treks I attended (2021 South East Asia Virtual Career Trek) featured an HNC alumni working in the videogame industry at Voodoo.io. I personally found this alumnus particularly inspiring; I’ve always been somewhat enchanted by the idea of working in the videogame industry but felt that my professional skills couldn’t possibly align. Looking at the diverse sectors that HNC alumni find themselves in, it seems that the breadth of possible career options for HNC students is much broader than one would initially assume. 

One can even find diversity within sectors. As I was organizing a finance-related career event, my research was, understandably, focused on the financial sector. Of course, there are many alumni working at firms that are easily categorized as being in the financial sector, such as Citi Bank, Goldman Sachs, BNP Paribas, Morgan Stanley, HSBC, Credit Suisse, JP Morgan, etc. However, there were some alumni working financial jobs at firms that wouldn’t traditionally be classified as “finance” firms. One alumnus worked as a Regional Senior Director at Proctor and Gamble; another works as a Budget Analyst at the National Institute on Drug Abuse… there were even some alumni who worked for the Economist Intelligence Unit (the sister company to The Economist Magazine that provides many of the analytical insights featured in The Economist). Such diversity can also be found in firms that are more traditionally perceived as being in the “finance sector.” For instance, for a finance firm to succeed, one needs analysts and data crunchers to understand the market, project managers to execute and manage specific projects, customer service specialists and relationship managers to maintain and expand relationships with clients, and even legal specialists to review contracts and ensure existing projects comply with relevant laws and regulations. This is all to say that there is a surprising diversity of opportunities in the finance sector, not only in firms not traditionally seen as “financial” but also within more traditional finance firms themselves. 

Another interesting insight I gained from organizing this event is how helpful and welcoming the SAIS/HNC alumni network can be. Cold-calling people is always a somewhat nerve-wracking experience; I always feel as if I am imposing on people—a feeling made even more awkward by a lack of familiarity. I was therefore pleasantly surprised by the positive responses I received from SAIS and HNC alumni. In my process of reaching out and recruiting for this event, I never received a negative response from any HNC or SAIS alumni. Even those with scheduling conflicts expressed a willingness to assist with future events next year. Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by the positive responses I received from the alumni I contacted.

I would like to close by giving fellow (and future) students some nuggets of advice I gained from planning this Career Trek.

First: Career possibilities for HNC students are much broader than many initially assume, and I would encourage students to step out and explore options that they might not have previously considered (as a completely unbiased tip: HNC alumni panels and career treks are a great way to explore these possibilities with minimal student time costs). Second: I would encourage students to similarly research unexpected possibilities within sectors (see previous completely unbiased tip). Finally, I encourage students to reach out to HNC and SAIS alumni if they have particularly burning questions about a specific job or field. I experienced very positive reactions when I reached out, and I can’t think why alumni would act any different.

Language Partners build a virtual HNC community

As students continue the semester virtually, our banwei (student committee) are working on creative ways to bring the student community together. At the beginning of the semester, the banwei organized a WeChat group for matching international and Chinese students as language partners. In this group students could share brief introductions about themselves and their academic or personal interests, so that others could get to know them and become their language partner. Alternatively, students could also fill out a short survey and be automatically matched to a language buddy.

This week, I sat down with Naeem Chowdhury (秋纳愔 ) and Leyao Shang 商勒瑶 (Ella) to talk about their experience as language partners. Naeem is a first-year MAIS student concentrating in comparative and international law. Ella is a first-year MAIS student concentrating in Economics. 

Describe your experience with your language partner.  

 

Naeem: Because of the situation in the language partner group where the majority of the students are Chinese, I have two language partners right now. I share classes with both, which I think is a really important aspect of what we are doing, and I meet with each of them once a week.  I really like my language partners because apart from the fact that we are doing language exchange, we also really get along as people, so there is no awkwardness in our meetings. We usually have a focused part of our meeting where we ask each other questions about readings, and we go over any linguistic ambiguity. For example, [I might] ask about the difference between two words that are basically the same but have a different connotation. After we do that, we have a conversation, and it’s not like we speak English for 20 minutes and Chinese for 20 minutes, it’s very 随便 (suibian, casual), you can use whatever language you want. We also have an agreement where if we write something and we want a second eye to look at the grammar and make suggestions, we share our documents with each other. 

Ella: Actually, Naeem and I met during some activities before classes started, so when the deadline for language partners was approaching, Naeem was the first name that popped up in my mind. He seemed quite talkative and outgoing during other Zoom meetings, and he’s also very nice. He always likes to listen to others and give others a chance to say something. Our first meeting was great - we had some daily conversation to improve my spoken English and his spoken Chinese. We also talked about how to read the MA tutorial readings, because the English reading materials are hard for me, and the Chinese materials are hard for him. We came up with a way that I can highlight some important Chinese sentences and he can do the same thing with English sentences.  I think it may be helpful for us to catch the point of the article as quickly as possible. We are also planning to share something related to culture. For example, there is a very popular street dance show in China, so I sent some clips to Naeem. 

 

Has having a virtual language partner impacted your language ability? If so, how? 

 

Naeem: I can’t say it has much yet because we just started, but I think it is going to have a huge impact on my writing ability, because I have never had to write a paper in Chinese, so having someone to look at it and understand in an intuitive way when something is wrong can be a huge benefit, and I know I’m giving the same benefit to them when I look at their English papers.  One important thing I keep highlighting is that I don’t want them to think it’s transactional, it’s more like, if you need help ask, I’m always willing to do it. 

 

Ella: Definitely.  It will improve my speaking ability because in China if you are not in Beijing or Shanghai there will not be too many international students. Even if there are, you don’t have so much time to speak with them in English. I think this is the first time I’ve spoken to a true American for such a long time, so I think it’s a good opportunity to improve our speaking and listening as well. 

Has the language partner program impacted your sense of community at HNC? If so, how? 

Naeem: Oh, definitely, a lot. The virtual situation makes the community building between the U.S. and Chinese students really difficult. The fact that we are not living in the same space means there’s this whole realm of body language that we don’t get to see, and so many of our classmates don’t turn their cameras on. The fact that I get to have these one-on-one personal conversations with Chinese students and to get to know them outside of class is huge. It makes me feel like I have friends in China, which is what I joined this program for. 

Ella: I think it helps me so much especially in this backdrop. You can’t go back to the HNC and there are only Chinese students at the HNC, so it’s very important to create a language environment online. Otherwise, we came to the HNC for nothing. I think what the banwei do is also really meaningful because they create so many activities and meetings.  

What is your favorite memory, experience, or interaction that you have had so far with your language partner? 

Naeem: In one of my last meetings one of my language partners asked me a question about the word ‘but’ and that’s how the conversation started - so what they were trying to say is “from 10 inclusive to 20 non-inclusive,” and I can’t remember how they said it because it was incorrect, but the moment I realized it was actually a math question, I got really excited because I was like “oh this is something I know about,” and I kind of geeked out.  I think (my language partner) thought it was really cute, so it was a good moment. 

 

Ella: I often have some language questions, like I don’t exactly know how the word ‘but’ was used in some contexts; whenever I have questions, I usually take a screenshot and save it and then I ask Naeem in the meeting. He’s really helpful and he not only told me what the meaning of the word was, but also showed me how to use it in a really American, authentic way. He is also very patient; sometimes I can’t get what he’s talking about but he’s always patient with me. 

 

Is there anything else you’d like to share about your experiences?

Naeem: I want to say to my international classmates, please join the language exchange group, because it’s one of the best ways for you to have a real cultural exchange with our Chinese classmates, and I’ve made two new friends who I feel I can call on whenever, and they feel the same about me. And that’s huge.