Taught by teachers from the School of Foreign Languages of Beihang University, the audiovisual-oral English course for undergraduates received the Certification of TED-Ed club in class for the first time in the fall semester of the 2019-2020 academic year. The certified course was tailored to the needs of the Class of 2023, which consisted of freshmen born after 2000, and the certification marked an innovation in the teaching mode of the “Gold Course”.
The generation born after 2000 is often referred to as new human beings in the digital age. According to TikTok, a world’s leading short-form video-sharing application, over 50% of its users belong to this generation, indicating that the freshmen born after 2000 may also be skilled at making micro-videos and short videos.
TED-Ed is an international Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) platform launched in 2012. Colleges and classes receiving its certification can use its courses for free, and statistics from the platform shows that currently about 10 Chinese colleges have qualified. Making good use of the platform, Beihang teachers of the audiovisual-oral English course for undergraduates integrated the English speech training that met the TED global standard into the course for the Class of 2023, who designed micro-videos and short videos on their own and uploaded the best ones to TED Ed Tube to exchange and study together with oral English learners around the world.
During the classes of the audiovisual-oral English course for undergraduates in the past semester, it was found that micro-videos and short videos were effective ways of comprehensive language training that enabled the students to apply what they have learned and generate clearly-oriented language output in a more interesting way, which was evidenced by their positive feedback on the course and significantly improved English proficiency.
Students of the Class of 2023 delivered their TED speeches and filmed videos
Demo video “Beijing Tu'er Ye” designed and created by students taking TED-Ed certified course
Reported by Sun Mei and Jiang Quanhong
Reviewed by GEOOS
Translated by Li Mingzhu
