For international Chinese language teachers, how to stimulate and maintain the interest of overseas Chinese language learners is the key to language teaching as well as a difficult task. To achieve this goal, they have been trying out new teaching methods and introducing new contents to make Chinese language classes lively and interesting.

Teaching varies in content

Recently, at the University of Cabo Verde, Chinese language students participated in the "What do you know about Chinese spaceflight" event. Ederson, one of participants, was interested in the Chinese space station and made a model of it; Lan Xin (Chinese name) was curious about the Long March series of launch vehicles and made a model rocket with plastic bottles and paper. "This event made us gain an initial understanding of Chinese spaceflight and sparked our interest in learning Chinese and understanding China." said the participants.

A Chinese language student at the University of Cabo Verde, designing a model rocket in the "What do you know about Chinese spaceflight" event.

According to the introduction, this activity is an attempt to expand the Chinese language teaching mode of the University of Cabo Verde, including 3 sessions of knowledge lecture, interactive discussion and handicraft making. During the activity, the teacher introduced the history of China's space development with videos and took the students to do some small experiments. While watching the video of Chinese astronauts doing experiments, the students exclaimed, "It's so interesting".

A Chinese language student at the University of Cabo Verde, participating in the "What do you know about Chinese spaceflight" event.

Wang Zhichun, a volunteer Chinese language teacher at Miskolci Egyetem in Hungary, is an athletic girl who found inspiration for her teaching from the very popular "Willliu Shuttlecock Exercise" on the Internet, and not only introduced the students to the Shuttlecock Exercise, but also guided them to use Chinese clapping during the exercise. "It was challenging and fun to make sure the movements were standard while keeping up with the rhythm of the music and introduced in Chinese in the process." A student called He Make (Chinese name) said.

Wang Zhichun said that playing shuttlecock is a popular traditional sport in China, and the shuttlecock exercise is a combination of tradition and popularity based on the movements of the shuttlecock with pop music as the background. "I want to tell the students about the kind of fitness young Chinese people like, to bring them closer to the students and also to stimulate their interest in learning Chinese."

Cultural teaching facilitates language teaching

Cultural teaching is an important part of international Chinese language education, and international Chinese language teachers have made various explorations on how to make it complement to language teaching and make students fall in love with Chinese.

International Chinese language teachers and volunteer Chinese language teachers from Newcastle University in the UK conducted a series of cultural workshops on the theme of the Chinese zodiac in order to stimulate participants' interest in learning. It started a number of Chinese cultural experiences for Chinese language learners. The event is divided into three phases. In the first phrase, the teacher introduced the Chinese names of the 12 zodiac signs and the personality characteristics of different zodiac signs to the students and told the legends of the 12 zodiac signs; in the second and third phrases, the teacher introduced the topics of individual zodiac signs according to the students' interests, while expanding their cultural knowledge by combining dragon dance performances, traditional Chinese customs and literary masterpieces such as Journey to the West, and encouraging students to use their imagination and creativity to make their own zodiac handicrafts.

Cards made by the Chinese language teachers in cultural workshops on the theme of the Chinese zodiac.

The students said that through the zodiac culture course, they not only gained relevant Chinese language and culture knowledge and enhanced their understanding of Chinese culture, but also created zodiac works and introduced the stories to their families.

Bao Kaiyan, a volunteer Chinese language teacher in Korea, employed traditional Chinese dress in cultural teaching, and spent a week dressing up in Chinese costumes so that students could feel the charm of traditional Chinese dress while learning Chinese.

The choice to introduce traditional Chinese costumes and the cultural knowledge behind them using costume displays and immersive experiences came from the observations of Bao Kaiyan during her Chinese teaching. She found that students were very interested and engaged in immersion, so she came up with the idea of telling them about Chinese dress culture and the historical changes of traditional Chinese dress. The teaching practice proved that this cultural teaching activity not only enhanced students' classroom participation, but also stimulated their interest in learning Chinese.

Finding language partners practices Chinese

For overseas Chinese language learners, immersion in Chinese context is an effective way to quickly improve their Chinese language skills.

In order to create a better Chinese language environment for the students, the international Chinese language teachers at the University of Wrocław in Poland took the approach of finding Chinese language partners for the students, helping more than 30 Chinese language students and Chinese fans at the university to form one-to-one language partners with Chinese students at Xiamen University.

After forming a "language partner", both sides can communicate with each other through video, voice or messages, which not only improves the students' Chinese communication skills, but also allows both sides to understand each other's campus life and build friendship, and deepens the understanding of both cultures.

"For me, it was a very good opportunity to learn Chinese. By talking with my Chinese friends, I learned some new Chinese words and interesting cultural knowledge. Nowadays, I am more confident when I use Chinese to communicate." A Polish student called Ou Chengfeng (Chinese name) said.

"The time difference caused us to communicate mostly through messages, but the friendly Polish students were curious about China and Chinese culture." Chinese language partner Huang Huihong said that. As a master majoring in Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages and a future international Chinese language teacher, he was touched by the enthusiasm of Polish language partners for Chinese learning and recognized the significance of international Chinese language education, "I hope I can also contribute to the cause of international Chinese language education, so that more foreign friends can fall in love with Chinese and understand China."

All pictures in this article are provided by the Center for Language Education and Cooperation.

original source: http://www.chinese.cn/page/#/pcpage/article?id=1199&page=1

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