Research On The Teachers,Textbooks And Teaching Methodologies In Teaching Chinese To Brazilian As A Foreign Language

The establishment of more than 500 Confucius Institutes and more than 1000 Confucius Classrooms in about 140 countries all over the world reveals the successful spreading of Chinese as a foreign language in the world.It also poses some further questions,such as how to improve the efficiency to expedite the international Chinese promotion to a deeper and higher level.The subject groups,learning environment,learning motivations and the nature of teaching Chinese to foreigners are different in different countries and regions.And targeted students,students' demands and language environment differ as well.So it is significant to do nationalized research on international Chinese promotion to some specific countries or regions.The economic and trade exchanges,together with cultural communication between China and Brazil make the Chinese learning significant in Brazil.As a result of the inner demand,more and more Brazilians are willing to learn Chinese in Confucius Institutes which is the base of Chinese promotion in Brazil.Today,Chinese learning is popular in Brazil and the number of students in Confucius Institutes is increasing continuously.The accumulated number of students only in the Confucius Institute of the Sao Paulo State University is more than 6,000 students.But there are some problems in the spreading of Chinese as a foreign language in Brazil.Firstly,Chinese courses have not been included in the Brazilian national foreign language teaching system.Chinese teaching is implemented by some private training schools,missionary schools,Confucius Institutes or Confucius Classrooms.These institutes have no restraining force on students who just learn Chinese by interest.As a result,they can drop out of the course easily if they have difficulties in learning it.That is why the structure of students learning Chinese shows a flat pyramid-shape,in which the students of the preliminary class constitute a very large part,while there are only a few students in the advanced class.Secondly,there are very few qualified and trained Chinese teachers who can speak Portuguese well,for Portuguese is a minority language in Chinese foreign language teaching system.Some Chinese teachers who have volunteered to teach Chinese in Brazil for two years could speak Brazilian Portuguese well after learning Portuguese by themselves,but they have to quit the job of teaching Chinese to Brazilians because of the rules of the volunteer program for international Chinese teachers.The systematically leaving of experienced Chinese teachers who are good at Brazilian Portuguese is serious problem in teaching Chinese to Brazilians as a foreign language.Finally,very few scholars focus their studies on research of the Chinese teaching methodologies,Chinese teachers and Chinese textbooks in the aspect of teaching Chinese to Brazilians as a foreign language.There are very few contrastive researches on Chinese and Brazilian Portuguese,and on Chinese culture and Brazilian culture both in China and also in Brazil.We think that the research on the teachers,textbooks and teaching methodologies in teaching Chinese to Brazilians as a foreign language is the basic research in improving the classroom teaching effect,and the promotion of Chinese in Brazil in general.We have gone to the Confucius Institutes in Brazil to interview Brazilian students who are learning Chinese and the volunteer Chinese teachers,to ask them to do questionnaires about students'motivations and learning strategies in learning Chinese,and also volunteer Chinese teachers'motivations in Teaching Chinese,their difficulties in their lives and their teaching.With the analysis of SPSS of those collected data,we try to explore some teaching methodologies tailored to Brazilian Chinese students,to explore the strategies of Chinese teacher development in teaching Chinese to Brazilian by the analysis of the problems and difficulties of those teachers,to explore the principles in the designing and publishing of Chinese textbooks to Brazilians.We aim to help Brazilian to make good use of limited time to learn Chinese well,and to improve Chinese teaching in Brazil.On the basis of a detailed literature review and interviews to four volunteer Chinese teachers to Brazilian Chinese learners,we think that the Chinese textbooks to Brazilians should take the following guidelines:Chinese and Brazilian experts work together to write the textbooks on the basis of contrastive study of Chinese and Portuguese,Chinese and Brazilian culture;the textbooks should be student-centered,Chinese character-centered and task-based;the textbooks should we published in traditional textbooks,but also in the form of information technologies,such as CD,online platform,Mooc or flipped classroom.We use SPSS to analysis the data from interviews and questionnaires and we find that the Chinese teachers to Brazilian students should improve themselves in the following ways:they should try their best to improve their Portuguese as soon as possible;they should learn the knowledge of Chinese systematically and do the contrastive study between the two languages and the two cultures;they should learn from each other in terms of teaching methodologies and take active part in the training of teaching methodologies;they should know more about the characters and learning strategies of Brazilian students;they should improve their intercultural communication ability and be more open to be integrated into Brazilian culture.And the Han-ban should take some measures to set up creative volunteer Chinese program to those countries whose official languages are not popular in China,like Brazil,to give some excellent volunteer Chinese teachers to Brazilian students a life-time career development.On the basis of data analysis of the motivations of learning Chinese and the Chinese learning strategies of Brazilian Chinese students,we think that the task-based language teaching could fit the needs and characters of Brazilian students.Some principles in task-based language teaching should be stressed in teaching Chinese to Brazilians:student-centered,interest-oriented,authenticity,interactions between students and students,interactions between students and teachers.There are seven sections in this dissertation.The introduction discusses the necessity and feasibility of the research.The chapter one reviews the research background,research question,research methodology,research meaning and the creativity of the research.The chapter two reviews the Sino-Brazil economic and cultural development and the previous study on teaching Chinese to Brazilian as a foreign language in terms of phonetics,words,grammar,textbooks,teachers and teaching methodologies.The chapter three reviews the development of the study of teaching Chinese to foreigners,summarizes the achievements and problems in the Chinese textbooks to foreign students,and then puts forward some strategies in publishing Chinese textbooks to Brazilian students.The chapter four discusses the strategies in the Chinese teacher development in Brazil by the analysis of interviews and questionnaires to those volunteer Chinese teachers in Brazil.The chapter five discusses how to teach Chinese well to Brazilian with the guidance of the task-based language teaching by analyzing the data of motivation and learning strategies questionnaires to Brazilian Chinese learners.In the final part,we restate the main conclusion and the limits and constrains of this research.