This section of Freshman English is designed as an interactive workshop to help students improve their listening, speaking, reading and writing abilities in English through various activities and exposure to a wide variety of materials in English. Using resources such as English interviews, news videos, newspaper and magazine articles, and intriguing talks on the Internet, we will focus on issues in the contemporary world. Students are expected to spend two to four hours a week to prepare for class, probably including reading an article, listening to an interview, or watching a video, in order to equip themselves with necessary knowledge and vocabulary for class discussion. In class, the topic of the week will be further explored through group presentations. We will have Writing workshop, Speech workshop, and Reading workshop in this semester. Students are required to write 2 concluding paragraphs (250-300 words for each paragraph) to express his or her viewpoints after a topic is discussed. Finally, students need to give a 5-minute speech and a group presentation (60 minutes, including 10-minute/15-minute group discussions).