Peking University, April 20, 2017: School of Journalism and Communication launched the “South Gate Reading Club” to its students since the spring semester of 2017. It aims to implement the spirit of the national conference on ideological work in colleges and universities, the spirit of Central Document No.31, and to further enhance the ideological exchange between teachers and students and to create a richer reading atmosphere. The club activities are divided into three sessions: “reading led by teachers”, “independent choice of reading”, “interactiveintensive reading”, which focuses on undergraduates, graduates and doctoral students respectively. The three sessions are open to all students from School of Journalism and Communication.
The session “reading led by teachers” adopts the form of reading before the activity, discussing during the session and further reading or creating after the session. The leading teacher takes the chair while the invited guests discusses about the topic. Via the discussion, students gain a deeper understanding of the background, main contents, purposes of eachbook, and so on. Through this activity, the opportunity for students reading classics enhanced, they get the chance to catch a glimpse of famous literary figures, and get to know various aspects of the book.
The session “Independent choice of reading” themes in “understand the real world”, and its reading subjects include both domestic and foreign literature. This session holds online and offline reading and exchange activities, including two parts: “South Gate Thinking and Sharing: Draft-levying fromJournalists” and “South Gate Meeting: The Path of Reading Swordsman”. The draft-levying activity collects excellent reading reports from all students. Those who take part in this activity can submit their works through the platform “Yunshuxie” every month. The secretary managing this platform will choose one manuscript from three reports with the highest quantities of reading and comments, then publish it on the school’s official Wechat account. “Reading swordsman" activity will choose five undergraduates, three graduates and two doctoral students with the highest score of reading and award them the title of “Star of Reading”. In addition, the school sets an“on-site debate” and combines the score of audience votes and guests votes to rank the ten stars. The star winning the most score will be granted with the title “Reading Swordsman”. The reading activities contain rich content and serves in diverse forms, students can gain in-depth mastery of professional knowledge, grasp the world's academic frontier accurately, and enhance the ability of understanding the world.
The main participants of “interactive intensive reading” are doctoral students. This session is presided over by young teacher or doctoral supervisor, and lectured by doctoral students. The author or experts in related areas attend and provide comments. This session is aimed to promote the exchange of academic thoughts through reading classic books together. The ideal achievementis to have output for academic thesis. Students can voluntarily choose whether to attend the club or not. Every period, there will be four main speakers, who are all doctorial students, they can combine their own research direction or interest and make a speech targeting at the theme.
In order to fully mobilize the enthusiasm of students, the reading activities make good use of bonus point system. Students can participate in the activities online or offline or submit their work to get points. “Reading led by teachers” and “interactive intensive reading” sessions use stamp signing system in the offline reading activities. Students joining the “independent choice of reading” session can submit their reading reports through the “Yushuxie” platform. After collecting enough points, students can redeem corresponding rewards.
“South Gate Reading Club of School of Journalism and Communication, Peking University” is an important part of the 2017 working mission of School of Journalism and Communication. It’s a paramount measure to create academic atmosphere, assist academic icons, cultivate talents with international insight, Chinese characteristics and features of Peking University.
Written by: WU Chaochao
Edited by: WANG Chengsiou
