On April 11th, the ideological and political education demo class of Jiangsu University “Advanced English I” was successfully held online via Tencent Meeting. Sponsored by School of Foreign Languages, the demo class was lectured by Lv Yuyong, associate professor of the English Department, School of Foreign Languages. Teachers from School of Foreign Languages attended the class.

“Advanced English I”is one of the crucial specialized courses offered to English majors. The demo class was centered on the theme of environmental protection of Unit 12 titled “Ship in the Desert”. By explaining the title and the first paragraph, Ms. Lv introduced the shrinking of the Aral Sea, a rather alarming ecological image, to the students, and elaborated on the causes and development of this environmental disaster, thus triggering the students’ thinking about global ecological threats, which were also questioned by the writer thirty years ago in this article. Using pictures, videos, text paraphrase and online discussion, Ms. Lv acquainted the students with the plain but profound environment-friendly concepts put forward by ancient Chinese philosophers as well as those far-reaching guidelines for developing an ecological civilization proposed by the 18th and 19th National Congress of the CPC, such as “building a beautiful China”, “Lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets”, “a community of life for man and nature” and “Building an ecological civilization will benefit generations to come” and so on. This demo class helped the students understand the author’s major concerns and get to know the contributions made by China to the global environment until now, thereby raising their awareness of environmental protection and strengthening their national self-confidence and sense of pride.

In addition, by fully involving the students in class activities and discussions online via Mic or QQ group, this class motivated them to do their part by caring about nature close to them and on a daily basis. Although conducted online, this class was a successful one by effectively imparting text knowledge, subtly embedding socialist core values in teaching, so that both the students’ reading comprehension ability and humanistic literacy were greatly enhanced. The demo class was well received by all the participating teachers and students.