Changes in Learning Experience
As our school claimed, the education it offered was western style, which was totally different from my previous learning experience. First of all, the biggest change was that all the courses were taught in English. When I first saw my textbooks, I felt so stressful, because they were so thick and all wrote in English. For the first week, I hardly understand what the teachers said and the readings in the textbooks. I was bad at Math and Physics, and learning them in English undoubtedly made them even harder for me. Unexpectedly, for the subjects I have never learned before, such as Economics and Business, I was interested in them, and they even became my favorite subjects.
For the second year in high school, we started to learn the IB program. In traditional Chinese schools, all the students have to take the same classes. For the first time, I could design my own curriculum. Based on my first-year experience, I chose to learn Business Management and Economics continuously and chose standard level Physics.
Moreover, how the homework assigned were new for me. Before high school, I never heard of the concept of “DDL”. In middle school, all of the homework assigned in the classes should be finished next day, which means our teachers scheduled our learning for us, and we just executed what they told us to do. Thanks to “DDL”, I was forced to learn how to manage my time and make plans by myself, and my Excel skills improved a lot.
