The Transformation Of The Teacher's Role In Professional Chinese Training In Singapore

Teachers of Chinese as a second language have a new task now - Chinese for professional use. How ordinary language teacher adapt themselves to conduct professional training courses effectively is a new challenge for them as well as a new topic in the research of the teaching of Chinese as a second language.Based on field practice in one of Singaporean service industries and the related pedagogical theories, the thesis tries to give an account of how teachers can transform their role from an ordinary language teacher to a professional trainer in order to cater for the new situation. By comparing the differences between professional Chinese training and ordinary second-language teaching, the author maps out characteristics of the professional Chinese training and shows its intensity and purposefulness. A successful transformation in this sense will ensure the effectiveness in this new task. This transformation consists of two aspects:1. To transform from the role of an ordinary teacher to that of the chief designer of a purposeful training course;In the company target-centred training course, the relationship between teacher and students should be one between supervisor and goal-achievers. The teacher shall fully perform the role of the chief designer with extra responsibilities such as designing teaching principles and outlines, organizing the detailed steps of the course, and editing teaching materials, in addition to the traditional tasks of writing teaching plans and classroom teaching.2. To transform from the role of an ordinary teacher to that of the required language trainer;It is a must for the teacher to conduct shifting from the way of teaching in classroom to a series of timely-targeted language-training activities; it is a must to study the method of how to train students properly and precisely. A language trainer should obtain "5-Ability" such as : the ability of the market-surveying and problem-solving, the ability of meeting the company's requirements, the ability of inspiring the learners, the ability of communicating clearly, and the ability of controlling and navigating the whole teaching process.The significance of studying this transformation of the teacher's role in professional Chinese training lies in (1) to explore and make good use of the resources of current Chinese-language teachers in non-Chinese speaking societies; (2) to smoothly transform ordinary language teachers into qualified professional language trainers; (3) to enhance the effectiveness of Chinese-language teaching overseas.