Educational Services Exchange with China (ESEC) developed this project to provide free training for elementary and middle school English teachers from China’s impoverished regions. This, we believe, will enable the development of the local community and, in turn, stimulate the reformation of China’s educational system. We are inviting Partners, whether nonprofit organizations, business enterprises, or individuals who care about Christian ministry and education in China, to join forces with us in this venture.

T.I.P. is the exciting new program developed by ESEC's president Dr. Danny Yu. Total immersion is what happens when someone is surrounded by another language 24 hours a day, every day - like being in another country. It is impossible not to learn language in such an environment!

T.I.P. brings together large groups of North American speakers and Chinese language learners for 3 weeks in an enclosed English-speaking environment. A model program was introduced at Peking University in the summer of 2005. Year-long participants will require no fundraising and have their plane tickets reimbursed.

You can make a huge impact, yet no fundraising is necessary and no teaching experience is required.

Enrollment is limited, so sign up today! For our program brochure please click:

 

FAQ RE: TIP Institute

1. What proof is there that TIP works?
The best proof is personal experience. Visitors and participants of TIP can see results as early as the second day of the three-week program. If coming is not a viable option, the next-best alternative is to visit www.tip.org.cn and the following three links online:

(1) TIP DVDs: http://www.tip.org.cn/VIDEO/INDEX.HTM. In 6 groups of interviews, graduates share the impact of TIP in their respective schools.
(2) Qinghai report: http://www.tip.org.cn/news/qinhaipeixunzongjie.rar. Qinghai is one of the poorest provinces of China. This report, written in Chinese, records how they applied TIP in the local settings.
(3) Chaoyang report: http://www.tip.org.cn/news/chaoyangpeixunzongjie.htm. Chaoyang is one district in China that is recognized for good English education. The Chaoyang District has a contract with ESEC to train all of their English teachers in TIP. To date, we have finished training the eleventh group of teachers from the district. The third attachment here is the report by the first group of teachers who graduated from TIP. Moreover, Chaoyang District is applying to the Beijing Municipal Education Bureau to declare TIP as an “Outstanding Course”. (TIP was also recognized in 2005 when we were beginning our pilot session at Peking University as part of the university’s effort to reform English education. The Ministry of Education recognized this development and honored the revised course as a “National Outstanding Course”.)

2. Fast learning means fast forgetting. Is the outcome of TIP training a temporary fix?
We use the “mother tongue learning process” for oral English training. In the three weeks of training our aim is to establish an English mindset, which is not equivalent to vocabulary plus grammar. The Chinese way of English learning via vocabulary and grammar is contingent upon memorization, and therefore can be forgotten. But the English mindset is a psychological process that reaches deeper. It works very differently from the traditional approach of learning via memorization. Furthermore, all of our TIP students are English teachers.

3. How is TIP different from the traditional way of learning English in China?
In addition to the “mother tongue learning process”, TIP greatly emphasizes self-initiated learning, collaborative learning, and learning through immersion in the environment. There are many limitations in the traditional approach to English learning, and all precipitate from the main mistake of making the teacher the most important factor in the learning process. The teacher-centered approach easily channels the teacher’s weaknesses in English to students, rendering him a major hindrance to the students’ improvement and learning productivity. The TIP training method puts students at the center of the learning process, so they are not limited by a teacher, especially by the availability of a foreign teacher. Another advantageous characteristic of TIP is its focus on building self-confidence, which opens up for the students a reservoir of hidden resources, reveals their amazing ability and potential, enables them to overcome previous limitations, and results in surprising learning speed and productivity.

Therefore, at the beginning of every TIP session we spend time to work with the students in the area of confidence. They will assess their value systems, particularly those of learning. By correcting the wrong attitudes towards learning, success, and themselves, the TIP experience often leads to opportunities for personal improvement, in addition to the advancement in oral English. So far, all TIP graduates have found the TIP training uplifting in their lives and the TIP methodology effective in their classrooms.

4. What are the values behind TIP?
TIP’s effectiveness is not due to being a highly efficient linguistic program. Participants of TIP do not simply improve their English-speaking ability, but more importantly, they undergo a positive shift in attitude toward themselves and their education. The average Chinese college student often claims that he is a poor learner and has very poor English. We strongly disagree. In our experience of English training in China for 28 years, and having graduated over 150,000 participants in various English programs, we can safely conclude that Chinese students actually have excellent English knowledge. In fact, the average college student in China knows more grammar and vocabulary than the average native English speaker.

Unfortunately, the Chinese problem is that they do not speak English. The reasons are many, but the three major ones are: 1) problem of face, 2) problem of confidence, and 3) wrong learning method (Chinese students rely heavily on authority figures as the sole channel for learning).

In TIP, we help the students overcome these problems via the ABCs (“Attack your limitations”, “Build your confidence”, “Commit yourself”). We challenge students to consider how they understand themselves and see others. The values that they use to evaluate themselves and others will affect their learning, including their ability to speak English. In TIP, attitude is everything. Other essential values that undergird TIP are: equality, team spirit, mutual respect, mutual support, confidence in oneself, trust in others, committing oneself to valuable goals, and challenging oneself beyond the limitations. All of these ideas are fundamental to learning English through TIP. Put another way, learning English can be compared to preparation for a marriage (“being the right person is more important than finding the right person”). Different from the traditional approach to learning where the teacher makes everything right for the students, students in TIP take the initiative to become the right learner (even teacher) and take the responsibility for the learning process.

5. What is the long-term goal of the TIP Institute?
ESEC has been serving China’s educational sector for 28 years. When we began this endeavor in the early 1980s, our goal was very simple. We were meeting the needs of a newly opened and developing China, mainly by providing language training for those going abroad. These were scholars from universities, scientists from the Academy of Sciences, and government officials from various ministries. This program was only a semi-success in our perspective, however, because it did not result in the overhauling of the English educational system. Therefore, in the 1990s, we adjusted our aim to target university students and English teachers. As a result of our cooperation with Peking University Press, we published Volumes 1-4 of the textbook College English Listening and Speaking. It was approved by the Ministry of Education as a national curriculum and further declared as a national key publication project of the Ministry’s “115 plan”. Still, our investment in higher education training did not yield a fundamental shift in China’s English learning. Therefore in 2006, following discussions with Peking University and with its support, we pulled out of higher education and took a new direction by establishing TIP for the particular purpose of training English teachers of basic education.

Therefore, the aim of TIP is to train primary and secondary school teachers in the improvement of their oral English. We want to free them from the past model of teaching English via Chinese, and to enable them to go back to the English classrooms with oral proficiency. Furthermore, they return to their schools also equipped with the proper teaching methodology for language training. Thus far, as an experiment, we have successfully trained and graduated over 5,000 teachers, all of which proves that TIP is a very time- and cost-effective program. Therefore, our long-term goal is to contribute to China’s reform in basic education, particularly English teaching in primary schools. We believe that our experiences in this venture will bring insight for overhauling the basic education system. In the past, we published several junior-high textbooks in an attempt to bring about the changes, but we abandoned that strategy because it was a slow method. Instead, we now focus on changing the teaching methodology. Present teaching ideas employed in TIP are completely in sync with the existing English curriculum for basic education. In other words, our concepts do not work against the system at hand. Our graduates can easily integrate TIP ideas into their regular teaching program. (Please see the case studies presented in Question #1.)

6. What are ESEC’s responsibilities?
ESEC offers the TIP design, which has been successfully tested, for free to all impoverished areas in China. This model is the product of almost 30 years of English teaching in China. In addition, during the last three years we have spent a significant amount of manpower, material resources, and money to make the new training plan fit China’s primary and secondary schools. This has been acclaimed to be the best English course in China. It is also the fastest (in terms of learning speed), the most mass-reproducible (in terms of training numbers), and cheapest (in comparison to all other programs) English teacher training plan available. Furthermore, we have created our own “Defeating Diction Devils” software, which has been copyrighted. This software is now available to all the schools in impoverished regions at a very low cost. (Software doing a similar job would have to be imported at hefty prices, with much limitation on user number and duration.) In addition to offering the teaching materials and copyrights for free usage, ESEC will undertake the financial support of at least one impoverished province lacking funding for training at TIP.

The preparation work for building the TIP Institute began in early October 2008. Promotional activities began at the end of the same month. We hope to get initial responses from the various contacts before the end of the year.

7. What are the responsibilities of the local government bureaus and schools?
We will cooperate with local educational departments and encourage them to make a comprehensive plan for the training of local teachers. The local governments should also be responsible for the students’ transportation. The local schools will be asked to cover the living expenses during training.

8. The program aims to train a large number of teachers. Will the challenge for quantity compromise TIP’s quality?
First of all, quantity is neither our ultimate challenge nor our highest priority. Our aim is to offer an effective and workable solution to the English education needs in the impoverished regions. Interestingly enough, any solution designed for China, regardless of the problem, must also deal with the size of China’s population. Therefore if TIP’s intention is to solve the problem of English education, the target of training 200,000 teachers over 5 years is not a marketing gimmick. It is a criterion for designing a workable solution. The training quality, training speed, and training capacity are all crucial to the remedy, lest TIP Institute is just empty talk.