In Year 11 I successfully run two academic societies in our school, namely the Linguistics Society and the Genetic Engineering Society. I am greatly fascinated by the study of these topics, and am willing to build a platform for students who have the same interest in them. After a year’s contribution, the societies were glad to win press attention from our schoolmates, as well as be highly praised by a variety of agencies: Genetic Engineering Society has won the title of “Star Society” in my school, whilst several school teams organised by it all won Gold Awards when participating in iGEM (International Genetically Engineering Machine). The Linguistics Society was recognized as the “Gold Society” by ITCCC, the committee of IOLC (International Olympiad Linguistics China), and I myself was also recognized as the “Gold Campus Ambassador”; meanwhile, many of our society members won national prizes and medals in the olympiad, some of which even successfully entered the national training camp (national top 30).
I am pleased to reach my original intent of running societies, as well as had my own abilities improved. In the following article, I would like to introduce my society experiences in detail.
Background
Being in charge of the Vice President of the Genetic Engineering Society last year, I was determined to undertake the responsibility of its president when the former president decided to leave off her post, in order to use the resources and experience that I gained from the past to offer opportunities for students interested in genetic engineering as well as biological science to communicate and research together.
The Linguistics Society was set up by my friend Yibo Zhao and me at the beginning of this school year, through which we aim to stimulate more students’ interest in language study and hence better continue the tradition of our ‘Foreign Language School’. Meanwhile, as the winner of the National Silver Award in the International Olympiad Linguistics China, I am greatly willing to help the great number of students in our school who are interested in this subject or this competition but have no idea how to start learning and preparing.
After a year’s hard work, it finally turns out that all the efforts we made are worthy and meaningful. In the following article, I would like to introduce in detail the activities we held through the societies as well as the achievements we were glad to gain.
Activities and Achievements
1. Linguistics Society
During this school year, a series of activities were held by the Linguistics society. For instance, we prepared introductory lectures to help society members get a brief understanding of linguistics. Meanwhile, Zhao Yibo was dedicated to expanding the members’ horizons through a wide range of creative ways, including posting a message of “daily linguistics knowledge” in the society’s QQ group every morning, or compiling a society handout that includes recommended booklist and other learning materials. Apart from learning and discussing academic knowledge, we also designed several interesting and funny activities to arouse students’ curiosity and passion for linguistics in an easy way. For example, we invited the Lumos Club (a club composed of Harry Potter fans) to together hold a meeting analysing the linguistic phenomenon of the magical spells in Harry Potter. From the perspective of etymology and morphology, we parsed dozens of typical spells, after which participants also learned and practiced their pronunciation as well as gesture together. At the same time, we prepared fantastic posters of translated spells and their gestures for each participant. Thankfully, the meeting was quite successful, attracting plenty of students and winning high praise from them.
the introductory lecture
the link to the lecture: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1gF411a7Rh?share_source=copy_web&vd_source=b8454367b4642c5facffcc6bd2bc69a7
an example of the “daily linguistics knowledge” message
the content of the society handout
the recommended book list in our society handout
our joint activity with Lumos Club
Meanwhile, our society is also committed to helping members prepare for IOLC (International Olympiad Linguistics China) as well as other Linguistics Olympiads, and I was glad to be the person in charge of this program. My mentoring includes compiling a handout containing typical questions of different topics, such as phonetics, grammar and semantics. The sample questions were selected from the past papers of the national linguistics olympiads of different countries such as China, Russia, and the USA. I organized them in an order from simple to hard, making it easier for new learners to get started. Meanwhile, I dedicated a lot to writing clear answers and language rules to help students improve their linguistic logic (this part will be introduced in detail in the next article). Two months before the competition, I was mainly responsible for answering questions from the society members. Whenever they encountered problems, such as puzzles with no clue, or language rules that are different from their own answers, they could come to ask me and I was always willing to analyze with them together. What is worth mentioning is that, when I was answering questions, compared to letting students understand the answer to a particular question, I focused more on introducing the universal problem-solving methods and logic, such as morpheme comparison, “colour marking method”, “form method”, attention to the supplementary material, and so on, so as to help students improve their general skills of problem-solving.
Attracting the attention of ITCCC, the committee of International Olympiad Linguistics China, our linguistics society was glad to be offered five places of participants for APLO (Asian Pacific Linguistics Olympiad) representing China, while there are only 26 places offered to team China in total. To choose the best representatives, we held a school selection examination. The problems were set by Yibo and I. We also designed an answer sheet, then printed the papers out and bound them. (the content of the exam paper is shown below) During the examination, students are encouraged to write down their own language rules and we examiners assigned extra points to reasonable rules. In fact, when grading papers, I confirmed that the ‘language rules’ were truly a better indicator of a student’s logic and thinking ability compared to the ‘answers’ (because linguistic Olympiad questions are often so difficult that basically all students try to guess the answers for questions like matching and choice).
our school selection election
With pleasure, we were praised by ITCCC as a “Gold Society” whilst I personally was glad to win the “Gold Campus Ambassador” prize. The committee issued a pennant to us (as it is shown below) and invited me to hold a national presentation to share my experience and suggestions to other organizers of societies in China (the script, slide, and link of the speech was posted in another GitHub article). Our performance in the Olympiad competition is not bad as well, as many of our society members won the “highly distinction” or “distinction” award in IOLC, and some of them even successfully entered the national training camp. Meanwhile, our on-campus selection and training for APLO (Asian Pacific Linguistics Olympiad) has also cultivated the only medalist in the international competition representing China — Xu Haoyang.
the pennant of “Gold Society” by ITCCC
the poster of “Gold Campus Ambassador” by ITCCC
my presentation about society operation
2. Genetic Engineering Society
Genetic Engineering Society focuses on topics related to biological science, especially gene and genetic engineering. We held lectures and seminars during this school year, while we also organized a school team to take part in the iGEM competition (International Genetically Engineering Machine), which was pleased to win the global gold medal.
As a society operator, I was passionate about and committed to providing members with as many resources as I can, including platforms for academic discussion, opportunities to cooperate with other high schools and universities, channels for getting in touch with popular professors, chances for carrying out research and implementing experiments, and so on.
To be specific, I invited seniors — elder students who had mastered bioscience — to share their experiences and suggestions for studying biology as well as participating in the competition with newcomers, and built a QQ group so that they can keep in touch later on. Biological professors from Nanjing University were invited to deliver lectures as well, whom students were passionate to learn from and discuss with.
Apart from learning from speeches and lectures, our society members also dedicated a lot to conducting their own projects with the support provided by the society. Last year, after learning from a wide range of materials and discussing heatedly with teammates, our society members reached a consensus to carry out a project developing an efficient method to converge gutter oil (a kind of unhealthy oil frequently to be seen in Chinese restaurants, which is made from discarded cooking oil and kitchen waste) into high value-added polyunsaturated fatty acids like lino1`lenic acid. To reach the goal, they designed their own experimental apparatus and mathematical models using online software and conducted experiments in our school labor. After school, they also carried out a series of social work to ensure the usefulness and feasibility of their project. For instance, they gave out questionnaires on the Internet, collecting and accessing the public’s comments on the issue of gutter oil in China. They also interviewed officials from City Administration Bureau and Public Security Bureau in Nanjing, figuring out how the food regulatory institutions work and receiving suggestions on their programme from these experts. At the end of the day, they cooperated with students from other high schools and universities to improve the whole program and formed a team to participate in the IGEM competition (international genetically engineered machine) using their project of gutter oil converging. Eventually, they were glad to win an international gold medal.
website link of the team Worldshaper_Nanjing:
https://2021.igem.org/Team:Worldshaper-Nanjing
Worldshaper_Nanjing and their gold medal
Currently, we’ve been focused on the next iGEM competition. Pleasantly, more and more students had been attracted by our society and finally the society members willing to participate in this year’s competition were enough to form as many as three school teams.
Apart from normal activities like those held last school year, this year I managed to get in touch with a biological company that is willing to share their research data freely with one of our school teams focusing on the microorganism dye, and they welcomed the team to collaborate with them on the research as well.
We also cooperate positively with teams from other high schools and universities. On World Environment Day (three days after which comes World Ocean Day), for example, we held an online inter-school seminar with Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, Minjiang College, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, and Northwestern Polytechnical University. I also invited other societies and clubs in my school including Brain Science Society, Marine Environment Protection Club and Insects Club to participate in the seminar. At this event, many famous professors from academia were invited to deliver presentations on related topics, including Professor Qin Yuan and President Lin Wenxiong of Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, Professor Tao Yi of Tsinghua University, Professor Wang Zonghua of Minjiang University, and so on. IGEM teams from participating schools also presented and discussed their research projects. The research topics chosen by each school team are distinct from each other, but were all interesting. For instance, the CHINA-FAFU team from Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University focuses on the development of microalgal biofuels, while one of our school teams, Nanjing_NFLS, is expecting to degrade the secondary metabolites of cyanobacteria: algal toxins. Meanwhile, it is worth mentioning that our other school team which didn’t present in the seminar, NFLS_Nanjing, is composed of society members dedicated to the composition of biological dyes, which would be safer and more sustainable compared to chemical ones.
In addition to winning prizes in competitions, our club has also gained a lot of recognition in our school. For example, we won the “Star Club” award and were invited to publish our activities and feelings in the school magazine. Below is the article I wrote and editted.
Our article in the school magazine
*After this year’s competition is over, I will also post the website links and awards of our school teams right below.
3. Summary
My two societies focus on distinct academic topics, but they have a lot in common. Apart from sharing ideas and studying knowledge, the two societies all choose to participate in national and international competitions to challenge and show themselves. Linguistics Society focuses on past paper practicing and training of problem-solving skills, whilst the Genetic Engineering Society encourages members to conduct their own scientific research, using the knowledge they gained to cope with the challenges existing in our real life. Both societies achieved great results in the competition, and more importantly, students gained a lot of knowledge and ability from the society activities, which is undoubtedly the best answer to the efforts of us society operators.
Original link: https://fiona-f-ang.github.io/2022/06/30/Society/
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