Junior College Experience ( Guo Rui )

Junior college immersion was an interesting journey. It is good for Chinese students to know Singapore education. According to the experience, I am cognizant of the differences between Singapore and China. Although I felt a little tired, it was still meaningful.
The junior college I went to is Tampines Junior College, which is located in the eastern regions of Singapore. It is established in the year 1986 and it is Singapore’s 13th junior college. The college arranged a buddy for every Chinese student. My buddy is an enthusiastic and hard-working girl. She has many good friends. They are all friendly and kind to me. They ask something about our bridging course and something about China they are interested in. It is a pity that my buddy says Chinese to me all the time, even if I say English.
Every morning, I got up at 5:30 and got on the bus at 6:20. When I reached Tampines, it was just 7:00. The sky was still dark, there were several stars. At about 7:40, we went to the playground, the whole college song Singapore national anthem and made a pledge. At 8:00, we started having classes. One class lasted one hour and one lecture lasted a bit longer, one hour and a half.
Tampines Junior College offers a number of course programs to the students. The project work is an essential subject for the students, which they need to complete. The college offers combination as well as several compulsory subjects to the students like mother tongue language. Science students can choose the subject which they prefer to learn. But in China, every science student must learn six subjects, including Chinese, mathematics, English, physics, chemistry and biology. Attending a class style is also diverse. Singapore students change the classroom for different lessons. In surprise, there may be no break between two lessons. By contrast, Chinese students have a regular classroom. When we finish a lesson that is forty-five minutes, we will have a ten-minute break for relaxing.
In class, my buddy and her classmates are quite lively. They have varies activities, such as discussing answers in groups, debating. They can share their opinions with others. They will ask questions as soon as they do not know the answer. Even if the problem-solving process on the board, they cannot copy, only write down the answer. After they go back home, they will do it individually again. In China, we are busying taking notes in class and afraid to leave out anything important. Generally speaking, when the teacher asks a question, the whole class will keep quiet even though we know the answer. It is probably Chinese characteristic.
Among the subjects, I am impressed by PE. In China, it is the most relax lesson. It is likely to run two laps, and then you can do anything you want, for instance, playing badminton, basketball, table tennis. On the contrary, there, in the whole class, students continue running and doing exercise, they have no chance to do others.
In fact, for me, the easiest subject is general paper, because I cound understand everything I heard. Other science subjects have a lot of specialized vocabularies, it is difficult to understand what the tutor say. To my surprise, economics is science subject, which is the arts subject in China.
My buddy’s CCA is tennis. I regret to say there are competitions between Victoria and Tampines. I do not have an opportunity to play it with my buddy. From the bottom of my heart, I hope we can keep contact with her, because we hardly to make local friends in bridging course.
In these two weeks, I learnt something about Singapore education and Tampines Junior College. It is quite different from China. In truth, it is hard to which is better, they can learn from each other. I also made new friends. In a word, the junior college experience is unforgettable.