Broadening physical, linguistic and intellectual horizons
At the Students' Union, executive members and student societies organized visits to Inner Mongolia and Beijing where they met student leaders from mainland universities and senior officials from the higher education institutions and the Ministry of Education. A one-week leadership training course in the Mainland is organised each year.

	STUDENT AGE PROFILE As at 30 June 2002

Students of the Institute are given plentiful opportunities to develop the trilingual competence which society expects teachers to achieve. The Centre for Language in Education broadened students' horizons, and increased their language abilities, by organising a range of campus-wide language enhancement and development activities in 2001-02. These included a variety of workshops exploring issues in the teaching and learning of English and Chinese including Putonghua. Visiting academics showed how the use of drama and recitation can improve creative English language development and how important a role creative writing and storytelling can play. Specialist trainers in Chinese prose and verse delivery spoke on prose and poem recital skills in Cantonese and Putonghua.

The Centre also collaborated with the SAO on a programme that encouraged students to use the three spoken languages of English, Putonghua and Chinese for exchange of ideas in a relaxed and friendly campus environment.

Meanwhile, the SAO also helped to organise an expedition to New Zealand in June 2002. This combined adventure activities with field projects, together with the challenges of living far away from home in a different culture. The new perspectives offered by such activities, especially when in an unfamiliar environment, had a great impact on our students. For participating students, the expedition was a small step on the path to becoming a quality teacher, but an important one nonetheless.

Supporting student development
Academic and non-academic development was underpinned by the Personal Tutorial System, extended in 2001-02 on a pilot basis to all first-year, full-time BEd students. The aim is to enhance students' professional and personal development by providing advice and support. All subject departments provided tutors for individuals or small groups of students who met their tutor on average four times over the year. During these meetings, a variety of issues were discussed including teacher professionalism, choice of electives, challenges of field experience, adapting to the new environment and individual personal concerns.