After graduation from senior middle school, since we have taken the college entrance examination, we need to decide what university we will attend according to the result of the exam, if fortunately not failed, and interested in becoming a teacher in the future, we can choose Normal Universities.

Take my experience for example, I chose to become an English teacher as my profession, so I went to Foreign Language College of Zhejiang Normal University. There, skills of English are taught as well as literature, translation, and linguistics .Knowledge of the profession occupies one very important part in teacher training, besides that,  psychology, pedagogy are also what we should learn, since as a teacher, we must be totally aware of these. For another, skills of teaching, such as calligraphy, teaching methods are also taught during the university. At the last semester, we practise teaching in different schools.

Before we teach, we must acquire Teachers’ Qualification Certificate, otherwise we are not allowed to teach in any school. During the first year of teaching , in order to guide us in our teaching, schools will help us to find tutors, who will observe our lessons frequently and put forward suggestions of improving the way of teaching. At the end of one year, we have to have a public lesson to see whether we are qualified as a teacher.

Learning never stops in one’s life, this is especially true to a teacher, since we have a saying in China that if you want to give your students a bottle of water, you first should have a bucket of water, which means we should never stop learning in order to sustain enough knowledge. That’s why we have teacher training centers everywhere in China, different training programs are provided so that we can choose the most suitable one for us.

Supports to students in our university are generally carried out in three ways: economically, psychologically and on study.

High education in China is not free, tuition together with living expenses becomes a kind of burden to some families, especially those in the poverty in remote villages. There are many students with economic difficulty in our university due to various reasons, some because of low income of the family, some due to serious disease of family member, some students are even orphans. In order to help such students, the university guarantees that they can get study loan from the bank, and they can return the loan after their graduation when they have found a job. Besides that, there are different kinds of economic hardship grants as well as scholarship and financial aid to those students with economic difficulty, who will have different amount of money in every semester, which is essential for them to keep body and soul together.

With the development of society, a problem occurred on university students, that is the problem of psychological health. In order to help students with this problem, there’s Psychological Counseling Center in our university, there teachers with psychological counseling qualification will help to solve their problems. Also, there’s a head teacher for each class, the teacher who is in charge of the class also has the responsibility to help the students with psychological problem, and there’s students’ affairs office, they can go anywhere to talk about their problems.

As far as study support is concerned, this is usually given to those students who fail in their study. There is a system of peer support and exchange of learning experience if they apply for it. Of course, there will also be one chance for repeating course in our university, with the purpose that every student can graduate without any problem. This is usually conducted in this way: once a student fail in one course, he can apply for the chance to repeat learning the course, then a teacher will be assigned to supervise the study, until he finally passes it.

Ni Huaying (English name: Susan),

Education in China generally consists of four phases, namely preschool education, primary education, secondary education and high education.

Preschool education is becoming increasingly important in China since we attach more and more importance to the education of this phase, we have a saying that what kind of education a kid of three years old receives decides what kind of person he or she will become in the future. Preschool education is mainly kindergarten of three years: bottom classes for kids from 3-4 years old, middle classes for 4-5, and top classes for 5-6, of course there’re also nursery classes for 2-year-old kid if you prefer. Kids learn how to have good habits and develop them from different aspects. Most of the kindergartens in China are private now, and that’s why we have almost the highest tuition for this part of the education, especially when parents prefer superior kindergarten for their kids.

Besides the normal preschool education, we also have irregular education with various forms for kids, such as children activity centers, game groups, etc.
For primary education, it contains 6 years. The Compulsory Education Law started from 1986 in China specifies 9 years of compulsory education, and the 6 years of primary education is included, so that it is free for all the students to study in public primary schools. Students who graduate from primary schools may, without examinations, advance to the appropriate junior middle school, which is the other part of compulsory education.

Secondary education contains two parts: Junior middle school and senior middle school education. Junior middle school graduates, after 3 years of free compulsory education, may enter senior middle schools after passing examinations set by the local examination authorities. The result decides whether they can go to academic oriented senior middle schools which aims at advancing to high education, if failed in the examination, there’s secondary vocational school waiting for them, after which they can either work or advance to high vocational education if they pass a certain kind of examination.

High education is becoming popular in China now, though there’s still college entrance examination for senior school graduates, the result only decides what kind of university or college you can go to instead of deciding who can advance to high education, as it did in the past. There’re different kinds of high education in China: regular universities, colleges, adult universities, advanced vocational institutions as well as other alternative forms of higher education institutions. For regular universities, 4years to achieve bachelor’s degree, 2-3years to achieve master’s degree, and then doctor’s degree.