Changyao Pan from China talks about studying English at Pace ELI in New York City

1. Please tell us your name, where you are from, and how long you studied at the English Language Institute.

My name is Changyao Pan, I‘m from China, and I have studied in the ELI for 8 months.

2. How did you first hear about the English Language Institute? I first heard about the ELI from a website of study abroad agency.

3. Which level of English did you start at and which level are you in now? Is there a class you liked/helped you the most? Why?

I stated my English study by 070 courses, and now I am in the level of 091, the pre-graduate courses. There are general required classes (which focus on listening, speaking, reading and writing) and different kinds of interesting elective classes. For instance, we can choose walking tour, vocabulary building and pronunciation, etc. The one I liked the most is the class of American Business Culture. We got a professor with abundant of work experienced. She not only taught us the knowledge and differences between America and the other countries, but also brought us to the live business expo to experience the real business world.

4. Which areas of English did you want to improve in our program? How do your teachers help you?

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.

5. How is the ELI Program helping you reach your goals of being prepared for an American University program?

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 likes 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.

7. Why did you decide to stay at the English Language Institute after your first session?

After my first session of studying at the ELI, I had made obvious progress in my English. Besides, I got used to and like the life abroad gradually. Therefore, I decided to stay at the ELI.

8. Please share with us your favorite place near the Pace University campus. Why do you like to spend time here?

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.

9. What makes NYC a great place to study and learn English?

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.

10. If there is anything else you would like to share about your experience in NYC or studying at the ELI that you think is important for students to know, please feel free to write it here.

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.    

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