November 16, 2009, the Working Group of Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language visited our school, which marked the beginning of the medium-term training of American Youths Learning Chinese in China Project of NSLI-Y. Keri Dooley, the NSLI-Y project director of AFS in the United States, Zhang Ling, Director of AFS Program of China Education Association for International Exchange, Yu Heping and Di Yan, experts on Chinese teaching, visited our school, and had a meeting with the school administrators, and they highly evaluated the AFS project work and foreign language teaching achievements made by our school
At 10:30 am, the inspection group came to the classroom for the overseas students. In the classroom, they observed to a wonderful Chinese-learning class given by Ms. Zhang Juan. Yu Heping and Di Yan, the two Chinese-teaching experts, granted full recognition to this class. They were surprised to see the students from the United States had made so much progress in such a short time of just more than two months. Keri Dooley, the United States NSLI-Y project officer, also felt satisfied with the students ' achievements.
13:30 pm to 18:00pm, the medium-term training of American Youths Learning Chinese in China Project was held in the third-floor conference room in Shijiazhuang 42nd Middle School. Keri Dooley, Ms Zhang Ling, Yu Heping and Di Yan, Chinese- teaching experts, Liu Shuo, an AFS officer, as well as the directors and teachers of NSLI-Y project in our school, students and liaisons of the project, AFS project volunteers, parents of host families jointly took part in the training activities.
In the course of the training activities, the teachers of our school in charge of the project and the officers of CEAIE organize the students to be involved in learning about and discussing the differences between Chinese culture and American culture, the way they could deal with the "culture shock" and the theory of how to spend the year of AFS. As for the challenges each student might encounter while adapting themselves to certain circumstances, all the people present discussed possible solutions and put forward some advice based on their experience. Li Huijun, the teacher in charge of the project, also encouraged the students to face the possible challenges and deal with the problems they might have by using the strategies which were talked about and accepted already. She also promised that AFS organizations and volunteers at all levels would also help them to overcome the difficulties.
The students reviewed the targets that they had reached after joining in the training activities and their own ways to achieve their objectives. They showed their new targets and expectations by drawing pictures and held a discussion with their own liaisons respectively about the strategies they needed to reach their goals. After the discussion, they made a list of these strategies.
Finally, the five American students made a presentation of the knowledge of Chinese they had obtained and the progress they made in Chinese learning during more than two months in China. Through a Chinese test, word-guessing games, a quiz ( in a question-and-answer form ) about Chinese culture, and improvisational performances etc, everyone present were satisfied with their rapid progress they made in their Chinese learning and the understanding of Chinese culture. In a happy and peaceful atmosphere, all the people sang a song entitled Friends, and then came the end of this training program.
The training and inspection of the Chinese teaching received high praise from all the attendees. It also played an important role in helping students of AFS project. The effect it reached was far beyond what the attendees had expected.

Chinese teaching expert Yu Heping got surprised and

 appreciated the scarf knitted by students by himself.