Fun and Productive Ways to Teach Chinese Language

For international Chinese language teachers, it is a crucial and challenging task to motivate and maintain the interest of overseas Chinese language learners. In order to achieve this goal, they have been trying new teaching methods and teaching materials to make Chinese language classes interesting and lively.

Diversification of Teaching Content

Wang Zhichun, a volunteer Chinese language teacher at the University of Miskolc in Hungary, is a sporty girl who became inspired by Liu Genghong's popular workout videos online and not only introduced the students to the shuttlecock exercise, but also guided them to tap the beat in Chinese during the exercise. "It was both challenging and intriguing to make sure the moves were standard and to keep up with the rhythm of the music, while also presenting in Chinese." said student He Make (Chinese name).

Wang Zhichun indicated that shuttlecock kicking is a popular traditional sport in China, and the shuttlecock exercise is characterized by both traditional and popular elements, based on the movements of shuttlecock kicking with pop music as the background. "I want to introduce the students to the fitness style that young Chinese people enjoy, to draw us closer, and to stimulate their interest in learning Chinese."

Language Teaching with Cultural Support

Cultural teaching is an important part of international Chinese language education, and international Chinese language teachers have made various efforts to explore how to make it complement language teaching and get students to enjoy learning Chinese.

Bao Kaiyan, a volunteer Chinese language teacher in Korea, adopted traditional Chinese costumes as an entry point for cultural teaching and spent a week dressing up in Chinese clothes, so that students could feel the charm of traditional Chinese costumes while learning Chinese.

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

Creating Language Contexts with Language Partners

For overseas Chinese language learners, learning Chinese by immersing themselves in a Chinese language context is an effective way to quickly improve their Chinese language skills.

To create a better Chinese language context for the students, the international Chinese language teachers at the University of Wroclaw in Poland took the approach of finding Chinese language partners for the students - helping more than 30 Chinese language learners and Chinese language lovers at the university to form one-on-one language partners with students in China from Xiamen University.

By forming "language partners", both sides can communicate with each other via video, voice or SMS, which not only improves the students' Chinese communication skills, but also allows both sides to learn about each other's campus life and establish friendships, while deepening their understanding of the cultures of both countries.

"For me, it was a great opportunity to learn Chinese. By chatting with my Chinese friends, I learned some new Chinese words and interesting cultural knowledge. Now, I am more confident when I use Chinese for communication." said Ou Chengfeng, a Polish student.

"The time difference made us communicate mostly through messages, but the Polish language partner was passionate and friendly, curious about China and Chinese culture." Chinese language partner Huang Huihong expressed that as a master's student in Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages and a future international Chinese language teacher, he was touched by his Polish language partner's enthusiasm for learning Chinese 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 international friends can enjoy Chinese language and learn about China."

(All photos in this article are provided by CLEC)