Pani Agenieszka, the GDUFS Michal Boym

New language majors are opened; new foreign teachers join us. Among them, Pani Agenieszka is the Polish teacher, who would be more appropriate to be addressed as the GDUFS Michal Boym, the first influential Chinese-Polish culture exchanger, leading us to explore Poland.

Experience Matches Profession

A long teaching history wasn’t expected at the beginning of the interview, judging her youngster like energetic manner. However, Polish teaching can never be more familiar to her.

Just two months ago, she has been to Beijing to attend the 60th establishment anniversary of the European Department of Beijing Foreign Studies University where she had spent 5 years working as a Polish language teacher. “It was a really good experience in her life” she claimed. Besides, 4 weeks ago, she was invited to a conference concerning setting up a Polish department in Tokyo University of Foreign Studies.

This experienced and professional teacher, who has cultivated dozens of Chinese-Polish culture exchangers, admitted in pride that when she backed to Poland she could always see her former students working in Poland.

A Responsible Teacher

Since Polish major just began this year, the course setting, teaching resources, anything that aid in Polish teaching laid under-developed in this campus.

For the first group of Polish major students, they have no idea how to switch to a completely new language. Time and energy need to be paid to improve the whole Polish teaching system and that makes our Pani Agenieszka worried. Fearing that students can’t build up a solid language foundation, she tries to create vivid communicative situations to express every Polish expression. Lacking Polish study materials, she keeps reminding the library to speed up the shipments of Polish origin books for students to practice reading as well as accumulating Poland cultural background knowledge. She is also thinking of promoting exchanging programs in order to dip her beloved students into pure Polish environment to, in her word, explore Poland.

Suggestions on learning Polish

Asked how to grasp the major, Pani Agenieszka smiled, “language is not just a language, but also about culture.” Therefore, in her opinion, students should not only focus on textbooks.

In class, Agenieszka hopes more and more students will choose to raise their hands to express their confusions bravely, abandoning Chinese shyness, because only in this way can they discuss together, exchange ideas and help her adjust teaching strategy.

After class, learning Polish, they are supposed to do more than just finishing assignments excellently, for example, they can read Polish literature in Chinese since a great number of Polish books were translated into our mother tongue last year. Furthermore, students can also appreciate Polish films to gain a better understanding of this country.

Learning Polish is a process to explore Polish Culture, which is time-consuming, slowly but fruitfully.

GDUFS in Pani Agenieszka’s eye

When an offer was sent to her in June, she made up her mind to pack up and start her exploration tour in southern China as well as the third school in China that set up Polish curriculums, GDUFS.

“GDUFS looks like a green park.” Agenieszka said excitedly. Old and green trees surround the little campus; lovely grass cover the land; air here is fresh; and the weather is nice.

“It is open.” GDUFS is an international community, welcoming students and teachers from all over the world. In addition, people here would like to go out in the evening perhaps because of the hot weather during daytime, which makes night colorful and interesting.

Students here are diligent, impressively. “When I walk along the Romance River, there are always students reading and reciting.” Again, Agenieszka mentioned that Chinese students tend to be shy at class. She will be glad to hear them ask questions.

Life in China

When we asked her if she have any troubles living in China, she said “No!” simply and utterly. She explained that life in China now is becoming easier and easier for foreigners. More living supplies are easily accessible like you can get coffee in Starbuck, like you can get cheese, milk, butter and so on in a local supermarket.

Talking about her hobbies, we’ve got to say that she is so talented and capable. She paints and she sings. She used to be in choirs, giving performances when teaching Polish in France and in Beijing. But now her love to choir singing is interrupted due to her move to Guangzhou. She said she missed the feeling of being in a stage so much and she will keep looking for a good amateur choir here.

In spare time, Agenieszka is kind of good at self-entertained. She browses on the Internet and watch Polish soap-operas; she had downloaded a lot of film from Poland to kill times; she reads books. When she said that, she proudly pointed at her giant bookshelf full of books either written in Polish or Chinese.