Successful Joint Training Day in Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language

On April 23^rd, we held a successful teacher training day jointly organised by the Online Confucius Institute at The Open University and the Confucius Institute at Lancaster University.

The hybrid online and face-to-face training day brought together over 50 people including university teachers, primary and secondary school teachers as well as PhD and undergraduate students. 21 people joined us in person on campus at Lancaster University and a further 29 joined the training day online. The Head of School for Modern Languages at Lancaster University, Dr Derek Hird, attended the morning session.

Dr. Mirjam Hauck kicked off the day in-person by giving an interactive session on  Virtual Exchange (VE), an educational practice that combines the deep impact of intercultural dialogue with the broad reach of digital technology.  She offered an introduction to VE and its various formats illustrated by exchange examples from language education and other subject areas. This was followed by an online presentation by Professor Guo Zhiyan on the subject of running a VE component within a Chinese language programme at Warwick University.

In the afternoon, Professor Yang Mei, the Chinese Director of the Confucius Institute at Lancaster University introduced the continuation theory, known as ‘xu-argument’, and how to apply this within Chinese language teaching The last session of the day explored new ways of teaching and learning Chinese characters and was jointly delivered by Dr. Kan Qian, Director of the Online Confucius Institute at the Open University and Richard McCurry, founder of Newby Chinese.  Kan Qian gave a brief introduction of the theoretical framework that underpins the research in Chinese character learning strategies and the main findings whilst Richard McCurry provided a personal perspective both as a learner and a teacher of secondary education.  

Both online and in person attendees actively participated in the four sessions by sharing their own experiences and asking questions. We hope as a result of the training day that more teachers will feel equipped to introduce these methods and approaches in their own teaching but also to carry out their own research into their own practices.

Detailed programme of the day is on this page. Recordings and presentation slides will soon be made available on same page as the programme.