Introduction

The semester academic salon for grade 2020 international students was held on November 19, 2021, as customary and academic tradition of the International department of Faculty of Education SWU, in training and teaching her graduate and postgraduate students. The academic salon provides good opportunities for nurturing the communication and presentation skills of the students by grooming them in the aura of presenting in any academic forum/ fora like conferences, workshops, summits, webinars, and speech delivery in the classroom, which will be of great significance in the academic sojourn of the students.

Proceedings

The November 19, 2021, academic salon commenced with an opening speech by Dr. Li Xueyin, the headteacher of Grade 2020. Four students gave presentations. The first presenter was Cheick Amadou Tidiane Ouattara, and his presentation was on the “ Public High School (Lycee) Teachers’ Perceptions of the New Curriculum and ‘Approache Par Competences (APC)’: Raising High Teachers’ Voice”; the second presenter was Ekene Francis Okagbue, presented on “Raising Innovative and Business Minded Students through Innovation and Entrepreneurship Education Integration in Higher Education: An Intervention to Graduate Students Unemployment Incidence in Nigeria”; Mohamed Leghdaf Abdellahi was the third presenter and his title focused on “Integrated Leadership for School Improvement: A Study of Secondary Schools in Nouakchott, Mauritania”; and the final one was Otto James Alfred Loum, on the topic of  “Challenges Facing Female School Principals in Public Schools in South Sudan: A Case Study of Torit Municipal, Eastern Equatoria State, South Sudan”. Two esteemed Professors of FOE, associate professor Hu Yanjuan and associate professor Zhao Xiantong, were invited to offer insightful suggestions, guidance, pieces of advice, and recommendations to the presenters. Nevertheless, students outside China domiciled in their respective home countries and the ones currently on the campus actively participated in the academic forum.

Constructive Feedback

Four postgraduate students presented their proposed titles for their doctoral dissertations, and the ideas they have acquired from the strands of scholarly literature reading so far in respect to the proposed dissertation titles. After which the esteemed Professors issued out their constructive feedback on every student's work and provided professional corrections to the errors observed in the students' proposal, simultaneously proffered alternative approaches to the challenges and difficulties students are facing in their research work thereby causing students to have a better idea and understanding of how to carry out their academic dissertation writing.

Students Interactions

The most interesting part of the academic salon is the interactive sessions. This is a medium that gives students an equal opportunity to learn from one another. Students with a better grasp of research knowledge also contributed their knowledge and experience to the ones the Professors have conveyed to the students for clarity to any confusion in their research. This student interactive session satisfies the teachings of the great Confucius “三人行，必有我师”(san ren xing, bi you wo shi). This is one of the popular teachings from the Analects of Confucius, it simply means that when three people are walking together there is a possibility that one of them might teach me new things. Inarguably, students learned a lot from the interactive session of the academic salon.

Conclusion

Learning is a gradual process, it requires the mentorship of experienced scholars like the Professors to guide the students through the learning process, and that is the purpose of this academic salon, but with hard work and resilience success is assured. Having an academic activity like this is a means to mastery, “mastery” in the sense of becoming experts by learning from the failures, mistakes, and corrections given to us by the professors, supervisors, teachers, and our fellow classmates.

供稿: Ekene Francis Okagbue

审稿：李雪垠、王雪