Research Of Students’ Cultural Needs Based On The Easy Steps To Chinese

With the development of International Chinese language education, teaching culture is seemed as an important factor on Chinese language teaching, especially in non-native environment. Because the lack of Chinese language environment, teachers rely on textbooks to teach Chinese culture, which means, it is important for both teachers and students to figure out if cultural factors are reasonable and if the students are interested in them. Therefore, firstly, we do researches on Easy Steps to CHINESE Book 1 to Book 6 after reading literatures. According to the results, we sort all cultural factors into eleven types. Secondly, we design a questionnaire and have Jamaican students who study in the Jamaican Confucius Institute evening class and summer class to answer it to know their cultural needs. Moreover, they also give assessments on culture teaching and textbooks. At last, through comparison for these two researches, we get the conclusion that most of Jamaican students are satisfied with the cultural factors on Easy Steps to CHINESE Book 1 to Book 6, which means it can meet their cultural needs. Most of Jamaican students are interested in Chinese culture. Anyway, lack of culture teaching and single method of teaching culture knowledge is a serious issue. Beyond that, according to students’ reflection, the shortage of culture activities and learning motivation is also a problem.