Last month, China’s Chongqing University of Technology (CQUT) agreed to adopt KAIST’s Freshman English Program. CQUT’s Freshman English Camp will be organized by the KAIST School of Humanities and Social Sciences for the next three years.

     CQUT’s Freshman English Camp is modeled after KAIST’s “Academic English Camp”, which has been run by KAIST’s EFL team since 2014. Attendance in KAIST’s “Academic English Camp” is mandatory for all freshmen who have failed to meet the threshold score on their TOEFL tests. KAIST views the program as a must-have for such students as it prepares them for the school’s English-dominated classroom.

     CQUT has introduced its new Freshman English Camp for the same reasons: to provide students enrolled in the Chongqing Liangjiang KAIST International Program (CLKIP) the basic English skills to take CLKIP courses. CLKIP is a joint education program between CQUT and KAIST established when KAIST exported its curriculum to the Chinese university back in September, 2015. Students enrolled in this program are given access to all of KAIST’s online resources and, more importantly, courses taught in English by KAIST professors.

     According to the agreement, CQUT will pay all operational costs and wages for KAIST to run a pilot of their program for the 2016 class of freshmen at CQUT’s Liangjiang International Campus. Late August, KAIST sent five instructors of their EFL team to manage and run the program for two weeks, during which they also organized workshops to help CQUT English professors improve their teaching skills. The English camp was highly intensive, with classes held everyday from 8:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.. These classes covered topics trailed around the four components of TOEFL (reading, listening, speaking, and writing), grammar, and conversational English.

     Starting next year, KAIST will receive royalty fees for the remaining two years of their contract.