Research On Summer Training For Local Filipino Teachers Of Mandarin

In 2011, Special Program in Foreign Language(SPFL) launched by the Department of Education of the Philippines(DepEd) listed Chinese-Mandarin as the fifth elective foreign language taught in the public secondary schools in the Philippines. Since then, local Filipino teachers of Mandarin selected by DepEd attend the summer intensive training held in the Confucius Institute at Angeles University Foundation(CI-AUF) every year. Meanwhile, CI-AUF also allocates the Chinese volunteer teachers(CVTs) to the public schools to follow through those Filipino teachers.Currently, the local Filipino teachers of Mandarin are large in number but still cannot meet the demand of the local public schools. The teachers' age is in generally uniform distribution, and the female teachers are greater in number than male. Their Mandarin proficiency is not high, only remaining in the preliminary state, so a better result of Chinese teaching is obtained in the initial stage than the following. The Filipino teachers have good attendance but there still exists several influence factors. This article analyses the summer training mode from five aspects-theoretical basis, teaching aim, operating procedure, realization condition and evaluation, and it also points out that the training is closed-typed, intensive and well-planned. To take the second summer training of Batch 4 as a case study, this article does investigation and analysis, including the basic information of the Filipino teachers in this training, their learning expectation and learning plans, their learning process and performance, the assessment and result, their appraisals for the training courses and the training teachers.Through observation, questionnaire feedback and interviews, this article analyses both the strengths and problems of the summer training. The strengths are:the training aim is clear; the classification of training course are explicit; the examining mode is in various ways; the training teachers are sufficient and clear in their accountability; the training schedule is in follow-up refinement. The problems are:the Filipino teachers are in large age span; they lack confidence in passing HSK-3; they don't have a unified learning plan or learning habit. Besides, the training aim is beyond reach; the training content is relatively single; the training is in short time, tight schedule and much difficulty. Suggestions and strategies to solve the occurring problems are:to clarify the training idea and set a right training aim, to set up reasonable training courses and attach importance to the teaching of Chinese characters, to inspire and culturally induce the Filipino teachers'learning motivation, to keep up the idea of learners-centeredness and to integrate the local Filipino features. This article also gives advice about selection of training teachers, improvement work of the teaching conditions of the public schools, and establishing a preliminary evaluation system for the local Filipino teachers.