Jo and Feifei in Xi'an

Our first seminar was in the impressive library building in Xi'an, organised in conjunction with EF English First School and Huash. The seminar hall was full and the participants all had a really good level of English.

This was the first time the BBC has done a seminar that has been open to anyone who wants to come from the public. This was reflected in the audience – there were high school students, English teachers, university students and elderly learners of English present.


They were enthusiastic and the majority of people wanted to volunteer to answer the questions and get the chance to win one of our chocolate Easter egg 复活节巧克力彩旦 prizes.

They were very excited to participate in such an interactive seminar and to learn how to talk about Olympic sports ahead of the Beijing games this summer. Jo and Feifei taught them some sports related idioms and found that the students' knowledge of idioms was very impressive.


They were particularly excited when the opportunity came to win a BBC mp3 player in the Wordmaster challenge, and the winner was Eileen; which Jo was very pleased about as that is her Mum's name!

Eileen, the winner of Wordmaster, receiving her prize from Feifei

One of the students, named Elvis, even treated us to a song from the singer he got his English name from. We really enjoyed his rendition of 'Love Me Tender'!

At the end of the seminar, the BBC Learning English team held a short question and answer session and many of the students had some really interesting questions to put to us.

Lisa, a student who had her photo taken with Jo at the end of the seminar

After the seminar, our kind hosts from the EF school took us to see one of Xi'an's sights – Tang Paradise – a beautiful park with a replica building of the emperor's home. We enjoyed some great Chinese food, some traditional Chinese music and finished the night singing karaoke to our favourite English and Chinese songs.

Photos of the Terracotta Warriors and Tang Paradise in Xi'an.

We look forward to another busy day tomorrow with a webcast at Huash and another seminar at the EF School.

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