Research On Chinese Learning Needs New Zealand Highlands Intermediate School

Focusing on the students' academic situation,and paying a closer attention to their learning needs is one of the major features of New Zealand education.Working in such an environment is a big challenge for native Chinese teachers.Firstly,to be able to communicate with students on a daily basis,the Chinese teachers need to be fluent and skillful in English.Secondly,the vast majority of Chinese teacher volunteers who have been sent to teach in New Zealand have grown up in the China's domestic educational environment.They lack a better understanding of the New Zealand's more open and free teaching model and dealing with students easily becomes a riddle for them.Therefore,to be able to design the teaching methods and contents that meet the requirements and the needs of the students,the native Chinese teachers need a proper way to understand the contextual needs of the New Zealand students.Trying to understand the needs of the New Zealand students and improve the Chinese teaching as well as the learning environment in New Zealand is the reason of this study.The author uses questionnaires,interviews,classroom observations,record teaching diaries and teaching reflection as key research methods.The author also makes a combination of the main theories of foreign language needs,for a comprehensive analysis of the students'needs.From a facts-based perspective,the author meticulously analyzes the most important aspects of the Chinese teaching and learning situation in New Zealand.In other words,the author tries to find an answer to some important,but still unanswered questions about the Chinese learners5 personal situation,and many other learning-behavior-like questions such as:What are the real needs of the Chinese language learners?Are they willing to learn Chinese indeed?What are their learning abilities?Is the current learning context and environment ideal for the Chinese language acquisition?Do teachers and parents have a deep understanding of the necessity of learning Chinese?Based on their full understanding of the Chinese language learning needs,can the staff and the teachers help the students to learn Chinese effectively?Based on the results of the survey and interview,the author comes out with new strategies to learn Chinese by taking the students' needs into consideration in the teaching activities.The author also makes some result-oriented suggestions to the staff and teachers,in order to improve the teaching quality.The author designs a complete teaching project,mainly based on the student needs.