Soundbites

Daniela Cuccurullo,?president of Tesol Italy

I think the government should invest more in the recruitment of teachers, because we didn't have so many teachers to cover all the classes at the beginning of the year, and there is a lack of continuity as students change teachers year after year. In addition, we should promote training courses, and that is what we should do to help the government as an association. As for problems with technology, we need funds to create innovative processes inside the classrooms with new technologies and new methodologies.

Aymen Eltayeb Elsheikh,?co-founder and former president of Africa ELTA

The Belt and Road Initiative is a very ambitious initiative, trying to connect so many countries together. However, these countries have different practical cultural backgrounds, so issues of language barriers can impact this cooperation negatively.

It is the main challenge we face, as we want to be able to understand and be able to be understood. Therefore, we need to develop a mechanism whereby we can overcome these language barriers and our cooperation, our trade, our economy will be conducted successfully.

Sergio Monteiro,?president of BRAZTESOL

Only 5 to 7 percent of the population in Brazil speak English right now. Considering that we are in a globalized world, mastering a foreign language is really the key.

I think being able to speak a foreign language can preach different cultures, enable the negotiation between different countries and can be mutually beneficial for different countries. I think what China Daily can do in terms of promoting this initiative is fundamental for bringing different countries together so that they can work together.

Liu Jun,?rector of City University of Macau

The establishment of the Belt and Road Initiative sends a message to celebrate the diversity of multilingualism and multiculturalism because all the member countries represent their own cultures and languages when we work with them together.

Regardless of our backgrounds, cultural backgrounds, linguistic backgrounds, we can work together through this global language (English), which is not the native language of many countries, but is the lingua franca that helps us understand each other and communicate with each other more effectively.

Shi Dalin,?vice-president of Xiamen University

In my personal opinion, when it comes to evaluating internationalization, there are two crucial aspects. The first one, in summary, is mainly about diversity. The second one, which I believe is even more important and perhaps harder to assess, is the need for an internationalized ecosystem.