Exploration and practices of bilingual teaching of soil and fertilizer science for agrassland science course under the new agricultural science policy: A case study of Qingdao Agricultural University

Bilingual teaching is a requirement for the internationalization of higher education under the new agricultural science policy in China. As a basic subject of grassland science courses, soil and fertilizer science plays an important role in cultivating intelligent and international innovative talent. With the aim of solving the problems of students’ low level of English proficiency and difficulties in learning courses using bilingual teaching, we used the bilingual teaching of soil and fertilizer science in the Grassland Science course at Qingdao Agricultural University as a test case. We strengthened the students’ pre-class preparation (academic vocabulary), class discussion (knowledge difficulties), and homework (summarizing knowledge points) in the teaching process. Combined with the characteristics of grassland science, we proposed teaching content, the diversification of teaching methods and teaching materials, and process-based bilingual teaching evaluation. Through the aspects of the teaching content setting, teaching material selection, the teaching method, the teaching process, and the evaluation method, our teaching model stimulated an interest in learning and improved the comprehension of the subject matter by the students. This provides a reference for the bilingual teaching reform of other related grassland science courses under the new agricultural science policy.