The Open University of China (OUC) held a lesson plan presentation training session for backbone English teachers on 16 June 2022. One hundred and ninety-eight teachers within the OUC system participated in the training and thirteen teacher representatives gave lesson plan presentations.

Fan Xianrui, OUC vice president, addressed the training via video link.

Fan Xianrui put forward three expectations for the teachers. Firstly, they should be conscientious in fulfilling the task of fostering virtue through education. Secondly, they should bravely shoulder the historic mission of building an English discipline in open education. Thirdly, they should create a new pattern of open education oriented towards a new era. Fan said that every teacher should stay rooted in the actual situation of education and teaching, constantly weather tests and difficulties, and enrich their experience in order to become real backbone teachers.

Thirteen teachers from the OUC’s branches presented their lesson planss, covering content related to English grammar, vocabulary, discourse, and text for courses from English majors and public English classes. The presentations also integrated hot social topics such as caring for older adults, employment issues and integrating ideological education into courses. Their lesson plans were in line with the characteristics of adult learners in open education and reflected innovativeness in the new era.

Professor Cai Jigang from Fudan University, Professor Liang Wenxia from Hebei Normal University, and Associate Professor Cui Linlin from Capital Normal University were invited to be judges and offered comments on the teachers’ lesson plan presentations from different perspectives.

The OUC Faculty of Foreign Languages has carried out training for backbone teachers every year since 2012. It has always been the OUC’s top priority to enhance the professional development of teachers and the construction of teaching teams. This lesson plan presentation show was tightly centred on the main topic of integrating ideological education into English courses and the presentations were given from six aspects including ideological education, teaching design, selection of teaching methodology, strategy of implementation, evaluation of learning effects, and innovativeness. The event aimed to showcase exemplary case studies of integrating ideological education into outstanding teaching design and help English teachers to improve their abilities in this regard.

The event was attended onsite by Zhang Luanqiao, director of the Department of Student Affairs and Teacher Development, and Zheng Jipeng, deputy director of the Faculty of Foreign Languages. Fan Rongrong and Li Chengcheng from the Faculty hosted the event in both English and Chinese.

By OUC