On The Role Of Teachers Of Chinese As A Foreign Language In The New Situation

With the development of its comprehensive force, China plays a more and more important role in the world, which attracts a large number of foreign students to study Chinese in China. Since the number of foreign students increased, so did the number of teachers of TCFL (Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language). However when our country is recruiting more TCFL teachers, we have to consider what role should a TCFL teacher plays in and out of the classroom. For a long time, Chinese people believe that teacher is a person who could propagate the doctrine, impart professional knowledge, and resolve doubts. Many teachers today still think that imparting professional knowledge is the most important role of a teacher. However, now we are in an information age in which we can google everything we learnt, which posts a huge challenge to the role of teachers.Currently there are few papers which systematically introduce the role of TCFL teacher, and most researches are focused on how to train TCFL teacher so that they can know how to demonstrate knowledge in class. However, in an information age, it is far from enough just to teach foreign students listening, speaking, reading and writing skills. What a TCFL teacher should do is take foreign students’overall development into consideration. Only by doing that can we develop oversea talents with full personality who not only can communicate well between two languages but also love China and love to spread Chinese culture. Humanistic education holds the opinion that in an information age TCFL teacher should not be confined to imparting knowledge. As Carl Rogers says, "we know... that the initiation of such learning rests not upon the teaching skills of the leader, not upon his scholarly knowledge of the field, not upon his curricular planning, not upon his use of audio-visual aids, not upon the programmed learning he utilizes, not upon his lectures and presentations, not upon an abundance of books, although each of these might at one time or another be utilized as an important resource. No, the facilitation of significant learning rests upon certain attitudinal qualities which exist in the personal relationship between the facilitator and the learner". Therefore, TCFL teachers should try to build good relationship with the students and gain recognition, pay more attention to their emotions, personality and potentials, and cultivate their self-confidence, a sense of achievement and creativity, so that they can develop in all sides with full personality. In such case, their language learning ability will increase spontaneously. Large reading of numerous books on humanistic psychology and humanistic education by Abraham Maslow and C.R. Rodgers provides a solid theoretical foundation for this paper, based on which, this paper focuses on the role of TCFL teachers. To find out what role a TCFL teacher should play, the writer designed a questionnaire aimed at foreign students who are studying Chinese in China or have been to China for language learning. This paper will analyze what roles a TCFL teacher should play based on the results from the questionnaire. To make the questionnaire and research more reliable, the writer also did a one-on-one "chat" interview with fifteen students and a lot of in-class and out-of-class observation, with the hope that we can find out what a TCFL teacher should do based on students’needs. Through all these ways, this paper concludes that:the role of TCFL teachers must change under new circumstance so that they can center on students’overall development and maintain teaching schedule and quality. TCFL teachers are no longer the one who give away knowledge. They must be a facilitator of learning and a guide who teach the students to be confident and creative and develop a full personality based on their emotions, needs and interests.