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A group of 20 international students have been volunteering their time to help some elderly people in the Chaoyang district, brush up on English, Friday afternoons, Beijing Daily reported.
These volunteers, from Beijing International Studies University and Communication University of China, give some daily-use English instructions to around 30 senior citizens in the Balizhuang area of Chaoyang district.
One of them, He Peisheng, commented that "Even though Beijing has many English language schools, few of them are oriented to people like us. So we're really happy that these international students come to our community to teach us and they're professional and free."
The English class is the brainchild of community leaders who wanted to give the residents a basic command of English language and, in the words of one of the community leaders, "The community has a lot of elderly people, and quite a number of the aged people simply wanted to learn some basic English because their children or grandchildren are studying or working abroad and they're troubled by the language barrier whenever they visit their children."
One of the Beijing International Studies University volunteers, David from Spain who came to China in 2012, explains that he teaches his senior students English words and corrects their pronunciation and, "While I teach English in the community, I'm improving my Chinese, and even more, I can learn some Beijing dialect."
Yu Miao, an associate professor of the Chinese Language College at Beijing International Studies University says that this volunteer work benefits the local people and is a good way to test the international students' Chinese proficiency.
