許丞翔/地理學系

Thanks to the CLA’s Cross-Cultural English Club, I could immerse myself into an all-English environment. I am usually too shy to speak English and always not having enough confidence to express myself. This gradually becomes the biggest challenge when I want to communicate with others in English. During the club, I had the chance to express my thoughts in English, to have conversations with partners in English, and to enhance my English speaking ability in fun!

Alex shared a broad variety of interesting topics and some questions that I had never ever thought of. Not only that, all the topics that Alex covered were highly relevant to our daily lives. We talked about social media literacy, education differences between the East and the West, bilingual Taiwan, and so on. We even had the topic of “Earth Day” exactly on Earth Day. The coolest thing is that we all went vegan that day since our lunches were vegetarian ones. Though we ended up online due to the pandemic, Alex still designed heaps of approaches, materials and resources to help us interact better in the club online.

Later on when I was listening to a podcast or watching videos, some of the ideas that we covered in these similar topics flooded back to my mind. For instance, I recently suddenly started to develop an interest in another foreign language, so I looked for some videos on YouTube. One of them was about a foreigner learning the language. It mentioned that we can spend time doing “active learning” and “passive learning”, bringing me back to the memories of what Alex shared. Exactly! There are many ways that we can improve our English besides classes. Alex also shared some online resources for us to enrich our English in different ways. There should not be any excuses for not improving our English anymore!

The club was extremely different from most English classes at school. Unlike previous classes I took, I could share ideas in English with classmates in the club. English became alive! It was no longer only a subject, but rather it is an actual language to me now.  Alex, the staff from the College of Liberal Arts and all the participants, together created such extraordinary experiences. After all the six meetings of this club, I feel myself more open and more comfortable speaking English. Looking back at my progress, I appreciate that one of the CLA staff encouraged me to join the club and that I did make the right decision. Undoubtedly, I had a great time, and surely, I would highly recommend my friends to join us if they want to improve their English speaking proficiency. I hope there will be more opportunities like this in future semesters.

吳鴻昇/生命科學系

I learned a lot of things from these presentations. Though I did not join every presentation, I was really happy that I was there. I remember, in the topic called Social Media and the Internet Era, when Alex introduced what the Internet brought to us nowadays. There are various videos on social media, and how to take advantage of them is what we need to think of. If we want to learn something from the internet, we must use the website with reliable sources.

Moreover, Alex pointed out what the economy is on social media; do those streamers with the highest subscriber number have something in common? He compared some of them and shared his ideas about how the population of their country had a relationship with subscriber numbers. However, the content still affects us. On TikTok, some streamers use their sense of humor to catch the attention of the public. But, some still make use of eye-candy content, for example, with lip-syncing and massive amounts of chemical reactions in videos.

Also, I learned some new internet acronyms. Although it is not useful “irl” and looks silly if we say it out, it brings us convenience when typing, especially lengthy sentences. Yet, some acronyms do not work in every country. For example, “DM” works in Taiwan, but it sounds weird when we use it in other countries.

I agree with some of Alex’s ways of thinking. The way he thinks is very valuable, such as using comparison and bringing out questions. He was here not like teaching, but more like sharing and guiding us to think. Thank you, Alex, for what you brought to me. This skill is useful in my life.

王俐雯/國文學系

Many international students enter our school each year, but we rarely get a chance to learn a lot about the cultures of their homelands. Fortunately, the NTNU College of Liberal Arts provided a series of cross-cultural presentations that helped us understand the cultures of other nations. I learned a lot about Malaysian food and multiculturalism during today’s presentation.

The speaker started off the presentation by explaining Malaysia’s multiculturalism briefly. He then showed us many pictures of the delicious food in Malaysia and introduced the food and the local customs. I was already familiar with some dishes, including Nasi Lemak, Dry Curry, Satay, Roti Telur, Teh Tarik, and Nyonya Laksa.

The part of the presentation I was unfamiliar with is the Baba Nyonya culture. I hadn’t heard of the beautiful Baba Nyonya Porcelains before, and the word “Tok Panjang” was also new to me. According to the speaker, “Tok Panjang” combines the word “Tok” from the Hokkien language and “Panjang” from Malay and is literally translated as “long table.” I find it interesting that the origin of the word, as well as the meaning, reflects Malaysia’s multiculturalism.

Before the presentation, I thought that I had a good understanding of Malaysia since I had been to Malaysia many times. However, this informative presentation made me realize that I only knew a few superficial things about Malaysian culture. In addition to the speaker, I would also like to thank the College of Liberal Arts for holding the cross-cultural presentation series, which has allowed us to learn more about the cultures of our schoolmates’ homelands. I hope that there will be even more similar activities for us to join in the future.