On Foreign Language Courses Designs In The Undergraduate Curriculum Of ICE(TCFL)

With gradually improving the undergraduate cultivation system of International Chinese Education (ICE), the curriculum setting has become one of the key researching subjects that researchers concern. The deeper researchers explore the curriculum setting, the more attentions are paid to the foreign language courses which foster language skills of students, which is one key aspect of goals for ICE major. Therefore, foreign language courses become prominent as an independent section of the curriculum setting relatively. How foreign language courses compose the curriculum of ICE and how to set foreign language courses reasonably have become the focus of research.The paper reviews the development history of foreign language courses in ICE firstly. Foreign languages as the primary teaching tools in the bud of ICE have developed into vital components of professional curriculum at the present. The development reflects the important change of ICE (TCFL) from "inviting foreigners to study Chinese in China" at the beginning to "going around the world to teaching Chinese" now, which is also the important change index of goals of course training of ICE, and more importantly, the development of foreign language course setting indicates the maturation process of the subject of ICE.As the subject nature and the status of ICE are set up, the problems concerning the curriculum are clear gradually. The nature, the design and the type of courses have been the key prospects of the curriculum. The paper regards seven universities in Hubei province as investigation objects and conducts a survey on the present curriculum of ICE in seven universities. The paper makes statistic analysis on the status of foreign language courses in the whole curriculum and the inner composition of foreign language courses from three aspects of the course type, the course hours and the credits distribution. The results show that foreign language courses play a key role in the curriculum of ICE, which are the main means to fulfill the objectives of the major. However, the proportions of foreign language courses in the curriculum are unbalanced in seven universities, foreign language courses occupy more proportion than Chinese courses in the curriculum in some universities, in others the proportions of foreign language courses and Chinese courses are equal, and in most universities foreign language courses occupy about one thirds of the curriculum. From the view of inner composition of foreign language courses, those universities adopt the frame of foreign language professional curriculum design, but have different cognitions on the course type of every subject. Some universities focus on foreign literary quality, some pay attention to foreign language communication ability, some emphasize language theories, and most universities have several goals for the foreign language courses. Overall, foreign language courses are one of the most important components of the curriculum and adopt the frame of foreign language professional curriculum. The unbalance setting of foreign language courses could be explained that every university set the foreign language courses in ICE by their own situations and understandings, thus there is various differences. Based on the survey, the paper shows the feature as well problems of foreign language course setting in the curriculum of ICE, which provides basic data for a more scientific curriculum design.