UM and local school co-organise English summer camp to boost students’ interest in reading

The University of Macao (UM)’s Faculty of Arts and Humanity (FAH) and the Sacred Heart Canossian College—English Section recently co-organised a summer reading camp for 20 students from the school. During their two-day stay at UM, the students participated in a series of activities led by Prof Katrine Wong from the Department of English and Ms Corrine Wallace from the English Language Centre.

The reading camp aimed to increase the students’ interest in reading and to provide an opportunity for them to experience college life. The first day of the camp began with a three-hour workshop, ‘Playing with Words’. Students were introduced to three very different English poems, an early modern poem, a Victorian poem, and a modern poem. In the Black Box Theatre, students took turns giving impromptu performances in groups of two or three. They also played with different voices for a short scene from Shakespeare’s play Macbeth. In the evening, Prof Wong and Ms Wallace led a sharing session in the Fellow Salon of the Moon Chun Memorial College, with a focus on interactive reading. Students were encouraged to engage with their selected texts using different types of questions. 

 

On the second day, the students again presented mini-performances in the Black Box Theatre, and made up creative sentences with the words learnt over the two days. The camp ended with a visit to the university library.

Prof Wong and Ms Wallace said they both enjoyed working with such a lovely group of students, adding that they were pleased that the students exercised their imagination and shared many funny and wild ideas during the camp.