All posts by David Feng

Education
Academic Life, London, United Kingdom

David Feng to Talk to Chinese Students in London on Studying Tips

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David Feng, Visiting Academic and Visiting Lecturer at the University of Westminster, will be speaking to the Chinese Students and Scholars Association of the University of Westminster on 12 October 2014. The event begins at 15:00 and will be held in Room A.1.04 of the Harrow Campus.

David will be focusing on how Chinese students can be excel in the UK in their studies. He will share his 12 years in Switzerland, 10 years in China as a student, combined with teaching lessons in China, Switzerland and the UK, to students from over 40 countries and territories, and will include advice on what students should do to improve their marks, but also to improve their experiences studying and living overseas.

The presentation is expected to be given mostly in Mandarin Chinese.

For those interested, registration (free) is required.

2014 07 15 CHN
Beijing, Chinglish, Education

Teaching Beijing’s Most Internationalised District English (Previous Version)

The Chinese government can at times be one of more difficult “group of students” to talk to, and it’s here in China, more than anywhere else, where a solid track record and years, if not decades, of experience, will probably be much more in your favour than anywhere else. Having solid (but also legal!… as in “non-corrupt”) relations somewhere in the system will also work in your favour.

It took me over 10 years of Chinglish-gazing around the country to be shown the right people to that one classroom in the Foreign Affairs Office of Beijing’s most internationalised district, Chaoyang, where people came in the evening hours of 15 July 2014, to listen to me speak about Chinglish — and how to fix it. For around an hour, I briefed around 20 people, most of them quite visibly enthusiastic, on how these mistakes were made, where they were often made, and how they could be best corrected. To ensure learners were best versed into the English language, even the introduction by the district’s foreign office itself was in English.

This was my first go at teaching an “all-government” audience, but if you could hold a microphone in front of thousands of unknown faces, you could do the same in front of 20 mandarins without a mic. I was happy to have helped the district of Chaoyang, home to many expats and embassies, improve their English in the run-up to hosting the APEC summit later that year.

David Feng Announcement

FYI: David Feng to “Self-Carbon Copy” All Sent Messages

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Please be informed that, with immediate effect, David Feng will be sending all messages sent from his email accounts to a dedicated email inbox — sent at davidfeng dot com. (This will either be as a CC or a BCC recipient.)

This email account is under full control of David Feng — maximum measures are being taken to ensure that both this account is safe and that any impact to your privacy, especially those which may put you at a disadvantage, is kept to a minimum.

After Cablegate, Prism, and Heartbleed, the Internet is suddenly a much less safe than initially thought. However, please rest assured that David is doing his most to ensure that your messages are safe and the mere act of “self carbon-copying” messages to David’s sent-messages email inbox will not result in any spam or undesired messages as a result of this.

The reason this account is being set up is that David moves between different machines a lot, and so far it has been very difficult to synchronise sent boxes from David’s main accounts. Also, at times, previously sent messages have to be referred to. The presence of a “sent messages inbox” will solve any problems in referring to past communications.

Please do not write directly to this “sent messages inbox” — systems are being set up to automatically mark all sent messages as “read”.

David thanks you for your understanding, apologises in advance if this should cause you any inconvenience, and remains happy to hear from you via email.