Chinese Language Teaching For Foreign Students From Africa

Culture is the main aspect of comprehensive national strength and the "soft power" in international competition and be paid close attention to. For over30years, with the policy of reform and opening-up in China, the scale of foreign students have continued to expand, the quality also being improved quickly, as well the structure, which highlight the function that foreign students can promote foreign cooperation and exchange and show the image of the contemporary China. Especially in recent10years, the global Chinese learning is booming continually. With this boom, the subject "Teaching Chinese as a Second language"(simplified as CSL in the following) has been gradually attracting scholars’attention and has become a research hot spot, forming a new discipline. Many experts and scholars home and abroad have conducted series of researches on this subject with fruitful results. Since1980s, this study has been carried on for30years, roughly, the development has experienced three stages, which mainly focuses on different language skills, strategies for all language elements teaching and teaching modes and so on.In recent years, the level of internationalization is higher and higher in China, coupled with the country’s foreign policy adjusted for the African continent. African students have become one of the main bodies of Chinese overseas students. We know that educational circles have made some related research for foreign students from Africa, but as for foreign student’s education, the scale and achievements are far less. It only puts focus on the education of the African continent, but has limitations in the country category and other fields, moreover, they pay less attention to students themselves and their language study. As for research on education in Africa, judging from the country, it only focuses on Egypt, Kenya, South Africa, and Nigeria and some other countries. Judging from the paper, Chad, Cape Verde, Ivory Coast, Angola, Malawi, Seychelles and so on are almost not covered. From a regional view, it focused on South Africa and North Africa who are the more developed countries with the relative political stability. Less research is done about West Africa, East Africa. From the perspective of research areas, it focuses on higher education and comprehensive introduction to education in Africa. Research on cultural characteristics of African students, emotional, professional choice, course materials, as for study of CSL learning for African foreign students is nearly blank. Foreign student groups from Africa have different characteristics than the other groups. With the increasing number of foreign students studying from Africa, how to carry out targeted CSL teaching has been put on the agenda, with a high degree of relevance and urgency.This study has summarized years of relevant, research results and reflection of CSL learning and teaching as well as for African students’Chinese language teaching in China and abroad for30years to clarify the essence, features, functionality and its theoretical basis of CSL teaching. On this basis, we summarize the African students CSL learning features from the interdisciplinary perspective, through the analysis, and the empirical research and analysis on their second language learning, in addition, we get reference from valuable results of cognitive science, linguistics, pedagogy, psychology, logic and other disciplines, combined with the features of African student groups in China, hoping to put forward the basic principles of CSL teaching and practical strategies. At the same time, according to the analysis of CSL learning cognitive theory and summary of teaching strategy, we deal with a research on foreign students CSL teaching strategy in Africa. This study makes African students in China as the research object, mainly aims at CSL teaching for this group. We put forward effective teaching principles and strategies, by extension, hoping to improve the efficiency of Chinese second language teaching, and to enhance the operability of CSL learning theory and to improve and enrich CSL learning theory, promote the development of the CSL teaching subject, hoping to contribute to CSL teaching career and the CSL principle development.The thesis is divided into nine parts:Part1:Introduction. We mainly have defined, compared and discriminated several group of core concepts and related concepts. The content of this study refers to "Chinese","second language learning","Chinese as a second language" and "mother tongue and the target language","learning and acquisition" and "language performance and language competence".After a full carding and analyzing about foreign language, teaching home and abroad, educational research and the basis of research on the status of African students and combining with my practical experience in teaching Chinese as a foreign language and my own research, we find that:Firstly, empirical research on CSL learning cognitive process is somewhat weak as well as the in-depth research on CSL. The research results have no strong guidance. Secondly, it lacks specific research on corpus of CSL learners or Chinese language. Thirdly, the study of CSL home and abroad has not been studied in depth; basically it’s still in the exploratory stage. Researches about the essential connotation features, functions, and theoretical basis about CSL teaching are not specific enough. Pending further study, particularly in the generating mechanism of Chinese language. teaching, besides, evaluation mechanism is almost a blank, and the perspective of discussion is quite limited. Researches about teaching patterns are mainly relied on introduction about the research abroad and lack systematic study based on characteristics and laws of Chinese language. Fourthly, the study of African foreign students’second language learning at home and abroad is less, having no many results. It has been biased towards local education research in Africa, but also has limitations in terms of the country and the field. In this study, we expect to make African foreign students as our research subjects, do superficial inquiry and look forward to helping improve and enrich CSL learning theory, to promoting the development of the CSL discipline, and building blocks for foreign language teaching career and academic development.Part2:The origin and development of the education for African foreign students.This chapter conducts a comprehensive exploration and research on the origin and development of education in African International Students. Foreign student education from Africa has gone through more than half a century. Firstly we introduce the history of education for foreign students from Africa; we divide it into three stages, namely the start-up phase, the initial stage and the rapid development stage. Secondly, we make a careful induction and summary of its development feature and characteristics of foreign students from Africa. Foreign students from Africa is a special group of foreign students. We must understand and master the learner’s own characteristics so that we can do targeted and effective teaching for foreign students from Africa.Part3:Analyzing the needs of foreign students from Africa in Chinese language teaching, we have discussed the learning needs of foreign students from Africa, by means of questionnaires, interviews, observations and other research for learners, employers, management and so on. The survey finds that African foreign students’ Chinese learning is dominated by instrumental motivation, mainly for occupational requirements.Part4:The theory basis of foreign student’s language teaching. We have discussed the theoretical basis of Chinese as a Second Language Teaching from the discipline level, which specifically includes four aspects:analyzing the linguistic ontology analysis of Chinese as a Second Language Acquisition interlingual system to address "what to teach" problem; psychological mechanisms of language learning from epistemological analysis to address the "how to learn" problem; from a methodological analysis of language learning to construct mechanisms to address the "how to teach" problem; analysis on the instrumental role of corpus linguistics and modern educational technology from a tool to address the "what technical means" problem.Part5:The teaching goal of Chinese teaching for students from Africa. According to the demand analysis on the African students learning Chinese in China, based on the relevant theory of language teaching and the requirements of the "International Curriculum for Chinese Language Teaching", this part discusses the teaching goal of the Chinese language teaching for foreign students from Africa: constructing a breeding system to strengthen the ability to listen and speak, read and write;Constructing (CSP) a system for Chinese curriculum and teaching material selection;Constructing a combining system of teaching method, which is based on professional content of task type;Constructing the quality monitoring system combining HSK examination and task-oriented real context appraisal.Part6:Curriculum design and teaching material development of Chinese language teaching for foreign students from Africa. On the premise of demand analysis, it means that curriculum design and teaching materials should be developed with the aim of meeting the needs of learners’vocational direction of language for specific purposes, content with the professional choice for the background in Chinese as a second language teaching for foreign students from Africa.Part7:The teaching strategy and path, which specifically refers to the strategy and path chosen in physical classroom. The textbook selection, the use of classroom teaching skills and other aspects should be consisted with African students’ extroverted tendencies, good performance, and the feature of easy to be satisfied. We also should adopt the "listen-speak" teaching mode.Part8:Quality monitoring in Chinese language teaching for foreign students from Africa. This monitoring system includes language testing and teaching evaluation. Effective quality control system provides correct feedback information for teaching Chinese as a second language.Part9:Conclusion. As a special group, African foreign students have their own characteristics. This study has analyzed the characteristics of this group comprehensively, combined with the latest results of research, studies how to conduct targeted and effective Chinese language teaching for this group, so it has the very high practical value.This study brings research about Chinese as a second language learning process and efficient teaching strategy into the perspective of cognitive linguistics, pedagogy, effectively combined with the analytical paradigm of cognitive science and cognitive psychology.Literature shows that, there are not systematic researches monographs or doctoral thesis about Chinese as a second language learning,and there is no or very few researches about teaching strategies for foreign students from Africa so far, therefore, this study will attempt to do systematical exploration in this field for the first time. This is the innovation on the research subject and research perspective.Later researches will hopefully be foused on CSL in a much wider range and coipus about it.