Academic Symposium on China's Human Rights Development

To mark the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 30th anniversary of China＇ s reform and opening up, the China Society for Human Rights Studies （CSHRS） held an academic symposium named China＇s Thirty Years of Reform and Opening up and Human Rights Development, on December 2-3, 2008 in Beijing. Attending were Wang Chen, deputy head of the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China （CPC） Central Committee and director of the State Council Information Office, and Luo Haocai, president of the CSHRS. Both spoke at the symposium, which gathered some 60 human rights experts from all over China.

Do Engineering Diploma Students Drop out Due to Reasons Other Than Academic Performance

The aim of this paper is to highlight the fact that students enter their higher education careers underprepared and fail their engineering studies due to the lack of various life skills. The South African Government is attempting to redress the social inequalities which prevailed in the education sector during the apartheid era. However, many students attempting their higher education studies are in many respects still under-prepared. This is mainly due to insufficient life skills, communication skills, numeric skills, and literacy skills. In the current study it was established, by means of a self-administered questionnaire, that students＇ lacking time of management skills, and study skills, are conditioned by their schooling not to value or use prescribed text books. These results re-emphasise the fact that students drop out of the programme for reasons other than academic performance and underline the need for effective measures toward student support and effective student learning.

A Study of Chinese Students in the United States and Its Implication for English Teaching in China

Language acquisition is a system with four components： language development, academic development, cognitive development and sociocultural development. Based on this theory, Chinese students in the United States are studied from three perspectives： linguistically, culturally, and social psychologically. It indicated that, to help Chinese students develop their English performance and cultural appreciation in this diverse world, the profession of English teaching in China should cover a variety of domains, including linguistic, cultural and psychological input. Both American and Chinese education can benefit from this special group of Chinese students if they can be better understood, and used as a bridge between China and U. S. cultural and academic exchange. In the meantime, the mirror held up to the Chinese students in these perspectives reflects not only who they are but also who they can become.

Progress of research on transportation geography in China

As an important branch of human geography, transportation geography has experienced three periods of evolution: foundation, systematization, and rapid development of the discipline. It has gradually become a relatively mature discipline. During the period 1930– 1980, the development of transportation geography consisted mainly of the publication of theoretical texts. During 1980–2000, it gradually became a systematic discipline. Since the start of the 21 st century, transportation geography has focused mainly on exploring the impacts of transportation on socio-economic development. Currently, studies on transportation geography have led to significant developments in a number of areas, including transportation theory, facility distribution and planning, transportation flows and network analysis, evaluation of transport modes, transportation planning, and simulation and assessment of urban transportation. Such studies have also enriched human geography research, provided a wider geographical overview and elucidated the development mechanism of transportation, as well as helped to understand the impacts of transport development on socio-economic systems. Some findings obtained by geographers have been widely used in transportation geography and related fields, including the four basic laws of transportation generation, the hub–spoke mode of transport organization, the subordinating and guiding functions of transportation on socio-economic development, regional transport dominance measures, accessibility measures, and spatial organization of port systems.