时间：2022-07-26 10:35:11
The Chinese-English Language Education Publication Forum is one of the important activities of Chinese Collective, held jointly by director of NOFCL, Xu Lin, and president of English Culture Commission English Education Consultation Commission, Catherine Walt. CEO of English Culture Commission, Martin Davison, and the vice director general of China GAPP spoke about the theme on the forum. President of Chinese Education Publication Media Group, Li Pengyi, curator of Commercial Press, Yu Dianli, director general of Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, Cai Jianfeng as well as president of Cambridge University Press, president of Oxford University Press, president of Pearson Education World English Education Press, president of National Geological Study and so on also gave speeches on the forum.
This passage is selected from the speech by vice chancellor of Beijing Language and Culture University, Qi Dexiang on the Chinese-English Education Publication Forum.
Chinese education and publication: development history over half a century
The modern scaled education and publication industry of Chinese as a foreign language in China started at the beginning of 1950s, and has now experienced three stages.
The first stage lasted from 1950s to 1970s. The first Chinese for foreigners teaching material in China, Textbook for Chinese, was published officially in later period of 1950s, and once has great influence in China and overseas. Except the comment books in English, Russian and so on, there are also comment books in small languages such as Vietnamese, Indonesian, Burmese and so on. Though Chinese teaching materials published in China were not too many in this stage, some competitive products besides the above mentioned Textbook for Chinese, including Basic Chinese, Textbook for Basic Chinese and so on compiled by experts and teachers from Beijing Language and Culture College in 1970s had walked to the world gradually and adopted by Chinese teachers and learners in many countries.
The second stage lasted from 1980s to 1990s. Along with the development of Chinese teaching industry in China, more and more higher schools and education organizations entered the field of foreigner Chinese education. This subject was recognized by the state and the society, which pushed further development of instructional theory research and teaching material compilation. In teaching and material compilation of western language in this period, communication approach and task approach oriented by functions had become mainstream. The Practical Chinese Reader, compiled by Beijing Language and Culture College and expressing the principle of combination of structure and function, had become one of the basic Chinese teaching materials most frequently used in the world in 1980s and 1990s.
The 21th century is the third stage for foreigner Chinese teaching and publication industry. Along with the development of Chinese economy, many places in the world emerge the upsurge of learning Chinese. Chinese government enhanced the strength to help foreigners learn Chinese also. The 850 Confucian colleges and Confucius classrooms held jointly by China and foreign countries spread all over the world. Demands for Chinese teaching and teaching resources publication are increasing day by day, bringing new status and challenges of big unprecedented development of Chinese education industry and publication industry. More and more presses participate in this industry. Chinese teaching materials and auxiliary teaching materials since from 2005 have reached to more than one thousand varieties, among which more than 2000 are from Beijing Language and Culture University Press, covering more than 70 countries.
Exploration of teaching system and publication road applicable for Chinese characteristics
In the past 60 years, Chinese education workers and publication workers in China have paid great attention to new development of foreign language instructional theory and language education publication industry in the world, researched and derived success experiences of English teaching carefully to make the teaching of Chinese as secondary language converged with the world secondary language teaching. We think the universal laws for English education is also applicable for education of Chinese as foreign language. The traditional language education idea in China such as “combination of language and text”, “study in order to apply” and so on are same with teaching ideas such as language teaching shall express multi-culture, the fundamental goal of language teaching is to train ability of use of language and students oriented, etc. These ideas are guiding ideology for Chinese teaching, as well as for Chinese education publication industry.
On the other hand, Chinese, as a target language without any pedigree relationship with most of the foreign learners, has many characteristics on pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, culture elements and so on, especially the unique Chinese characters system. These make Chinese unique and difficult in learning and teaching. Take grammar for example, no matter in west Europe, east Europe or North America, South America or even in middle Asia, the native languages are languages with changing forms. But it is totally different in learning Chinese. Chinese has no strict format changing. It uses function words or change of word order as its grammatical device, which is unfamiliar to learners from the above mentioned areas. Their native language knowledge and habits cannot help them in learning Chinese, but even disturb their study sometimes, or even cause deviations. It is this kind of particularity and difficulty that requires us, based on the English teaching and teaching material compilation, further research Characteristics of Chinese and the special laws of Chinese learning and teaching, thus to find teaching system and publication road applicable for Chinese characteristics.
Thinking on international Chinese teaching resources publication under new situation
In order to suit the new situation of international Chinese education development nowadays, and the new demands on Chinese teaching, teaching material and teacher development therefore caused, Chinese education workers and publication workers are now with new thinking.
Philosophy for Chinese teaching material publication
Seen from current excellent Chinese teaching materials home and abroad, the publication of Chinese teaching materials shall apply itself on satisfying teaching demands and student demands to make the Chinese teaching theory study results combined with teaching material design, Chinese teaching material study combined with teaching material development, and Chinese teaching reality combined with teaching material compilation.
R&D and publication of overseas localization Chinese teaching materials
The director of NOFCL, Xu Lin, once said: it is the fundamental for teaching materials to be verified by the market. Teachers shall break themselves away from themselves. They shall be close to the thoughts, habits and living of foreigners to compile teaching materials and organize teaching activities. The Chinese style teaching materials shall be changed into localized teaching materials with a starting point of “what they want to learn” instead of “what we require them to learn”.
I agree with this point of view totally. In details, I think the R&D and publication of localized Chinese teaching materials shall achieve the following points:
Take target students as the subject. Research the mind and body development characteristics and language learning laws of foreign students; research basic characteristics of foreign school education to compile Chinese teaching materials complying with foreign student language study laws with suitable content, scientific activities and efficient compilation manner.
It shall integrate language and real lives of target students. Content, subject and activities in teaching units shall be closed to the reality of students.Material selection for the textbook shall be interesting. There shall be certain openness and flexibility. Fully focus on real demands of teaching is of benefit to creative utilization of the teaching materials according to different situations of each school and real demands of each class by the teachers and students.
Paper material R&D shall be performed synchronously with development of multi-media teaching materials and network teaching materials. Give full play to functions and advantages of teaching materials with different medium to provide feasible integrated solution for Chinese teaching.
The Chinese teaching resources publication shall combine teaching research, teaching material R&D and teacher training
A press shall be a research institution at first. It shall participate in research of leading subjects and urgent subjects related to language teaching actively. It is only with this academic height that can ensure quality of the publication, and thus make the publication to lead the academic trend. Experiences of the profession in English and American publication circles are worth to learn.
Different from secondary language teaching of English, French, German, Spanish, Russian and other languages with long history, profound theoretical basis and rich practical experiences, Chinese has a short rise time as a secondary language teaching in the world scope with relatively weak foundation, especially that there are lots of things to do on theoretical research. In order to solve new issues occurred in teaching and teacher training, especially creation in promotion of teaching material development, the press shall enhance its own research force to set up a batch of first-level domestic foreigner Chinese teaching research experts to keep close communication with overseas Chinese teaching experts and Chinese teachers, and to acquire first-hand teaching information and listen to suggestions on the teaching materials from teachers directly to ensure the quality of the teaching materials.
After years of efforts, Beijing Language and Culture University Press has established an excellent expert team, an excellent author team and an excellent editor team to devote to R&D and publication of Chinese teaching resources, and forged a batch of Chinese teaching materials with significant influence at home and abroad, including Chinese Paradise, Learn Chinese Easily, New Practical Chinese Reader, Great Wall Chinese, 301 Sentences for Chinese Dialogs, Chinese Course and so on. The New Concept Chinese issued on 2012 London Book Fair is Chinese teaching material aiming at the worldwide Confucian colleges. It is researched and developed by Beijing Language and Culture University Press together with Chinese teaching experts at home and abroad and NOFCL.
Enhance cooperation with international publication circle for complement of each other’s advantages and promote win-win situation
Beijing Language and Culture University Press pays great attention to cooperation with foreign publication circle. It has carried out cooperation for international Chinese teaching materials publication with publication organizations in countries such as England, America, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam and so on, as well as set up strategical cooperation relationship with Chinese teacher societies and Confucian colleges in many countries, aiming at research, develop and publish Chinese teaching materials suitable for overseas demands by cooperation to fulfill a win-win situation.
In order to go deeply into the front line of overseas Chinese teaching, further enhance contact with foreign Chinese teachers and learners and get better cooperation with overseas publication organizations, in November 2011, Chinese Parasol Press, the North American Branch of Beijing Language and Culture University Press, was founded in Chicago, America, and it is the first branch established overseas by Chinese Mainland Press.
So far though the publication of Chinese teaching materials has had rapid development, there are few localized Chinese teaching materials which can fully satisfy learners’ demands. That is the goal we should make further efforts to reach. Chinese presses, including Beijing Language and Culture University Press, have relatively long research history on Chinese teaching. They have relatively rich resources on Chinese teaching and publication. Our profession overseas have relatively more experiences on publication and issuance of language teaching materials. (The author is the vice chancellor of Beijing Language and Culture University and chairman of Beijing Language and Culture University Press)