Howard was a senior high school student who came to City College Plymouth from Taiwan to study an International Foundation Course in Business and is now a student of Business Management at the University of East Anglia. He reflects on his experience studying Business in the UK.
“I chose to study the business foundation course at City College. Unlike in Taiwan, where high schools are divided into three pathways, science, social studies and general studies. In the UK, foundation courses are much more focused. If you choose a business foundation course, the content is closely related to the course you’ll study at university, giving you a better understanding of the subject matter and preparing you more effectively for university. It definitely made my transition to university smoother!”
“The class schedules and teaching methods are so different from those in Taiwan. In the UK, a single class can last at least 45 minutes to up to two hours, with breaks in between. The teaching style here is also very different. In the UK, there’s more interesting interactions between teachers and students in class, unlike in Taiwan, where usually the teacher lectures while students take notes, or the teachers just ask questions with the students answering.
Exams in the UK are also different. There might be only one or two exams for an entire semester, with the rest of the grades based on group assignments and reports. I had to get used to the teacher dividing students into groups of three or four and assigning them a report topic, closely related to the course content. After group discussions and preparation, we’d present the report to the teacher and classmates as a group. One last thing that stands out about the UK is the lovely long holidays!”