A TYPICAL AMERICAN CLASS

It is a little bit difficult for me to imagine Pete as a professor, since he is so fashionable and cool- more like a film star than a professor. Actually, he is an outstanding professor and everyone will agree with me after attending his class.


I was honored to have a chance to attend Pete's class on Thursday. At first, Pete proposed his three rules in his class: the first one is English, that is, always speak English in his class, the second one is no little machines, that is, electronic dictionaries and cellphones are not permitted in the class. I highly support that because we are learning English in America, and the best to learn it is to use it and think it. The third rule is called 'Hey Pete!', that is, no matter when you have any questions, you can just put up your hands and say it aloud, 'Hey Pete!' , then Pete will answer the questions for you. This rule seems to be weird for us since it is not a common situation in China. In Chinese class, the teachers are always the boss and always right. We are taught to follow the teachers' thoughts and more often than not, we raise our hands to answer the teachers' questions not to ask teachers questions. Besides that, it is especially rude to interrupt teacher's instructions and bring out a tough question which is not easy to answer for the teacher. As long as I'm in USA, I have to do in an American way and be more brave.


The class was divided into three groups and the topic of my group was to discuss climate change and how it might affect humans in a profound way. I had prepared for it last night and got some points of my own. I thought the global climate was getting warmer and warmer because of greenhouse effect since so much greenhouse gases such as CO2 and methane are released everyday. As to the consequence of global warming, the first thing came to my mind was that the global warming might cause the glaciers to melt and increase the sea level which might submerge the small islands or even the continents. However, through discussion with other students, I got some new ideas which I could never think of on my own. Somebody said the warming of climate may cause the spread of mosquitoes since they tend to live and reproduce in warmer conditions. And mosquitoes carry bacterium and virus and transmit disease. The disease problems brought with global warming should also be considered. And more other novel and terrific ideas were mentioned in the discussions. Thus, I thought the American way of teaching was more efficient and effective than Chinese way, since the former one encouraged people to think and have different opinions which were very important to learn real knowledge.