On July 12 and 13, 2016, Professor John H. Powers from the School of Communication of Hong Kong Baptist University was invited to the International Business College (IBC) to conduct a course training (Public Speaking Teacher Training Workshop) for public speaking courses, and to guide IBC’s construction of the international general education courses.

Being a well-known expert and scholar in the field of public speaking courses. Professor John H. Powers has published many lecture materials, work and papers. He used to be a chair of the General Education Committee of Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU) and has extensive practical experience and in-depth theoretical research on the construction, teaching and evaluation of international general education courses.

During his lectures at IBC, Professor Powers, conducted comprehensive discussions with Professor Wu Jianli, Dean of IBC; Professor Yun Qiaoyun, Vice Dean; and many other teachers of the Language Center responsible for public speaking courses conducted international general education courses and the construction of curriculum system.

Besides, Professor Powers also explained in detail the types and structure of lectures, teaching arrangements, evaluation criteria, classroom activities and syllabus compilation, etc., and answered relevant questions raised by teachers very patiently. Based on the example cases of  foreign universities and Hong Kong universities, he proposed that the IBC’s general courses can be planned more systematically from following three aspects: graduate attributes, subject categories and specific courses.  

As a quite important general course in university, public speaking was opened relatively early in Western universities. And in light of its significance in improving students' communication skills, expression ability, personal charm, self-confidence and probability of success, more and more domestic colleges and universities have begun to offer speech courses, especially English speech courses in recent years. As one of the 30 international courses under construction at IBC, the public speaking course is planned to be offered to students in the Sino-British Cooperative Finance Program.

Date: 2016-07-14