| In recent years,the learning and teaching of Chinese has been growing at an unprecedented rate worldwide.Learners from many different countries around the world are learning Chinese and are committed to teaching Chinese in their home countries.Sri Lanka,a friendly neighbor of China and an important participant in the Belt and Road Initiative,has seen a steady increase in the number of people wishing to understand and learn Chinese language and culture in recent years,as well as a steady growth in the teaching of Chinese language throughout the country.Among several universities in Sri Lanka that offer Chinese language courses,Sabaragamuwa University and University of Kelaniya are two of the most famous universities in the country in terms of languages.The Department of Languages was established in 1995 when the Sabaragamuwa University was established.Today,it remains one of the prominent language departments in the Sri Lankan national university system.University of Kelaniya maintains a unique reputation for language studies and is the only university in Sri Lanka to offer specialized programs in six languages,and the Department of Modern Languages is one of the oldest departments in the university and one of the very few university departments in the country to offer such a wide range of specialized foreign language programs to students.Both Sabaragamuwa University and University of Kelaniya design Bachelor of Arts Honors Degree Programs in Chinese（4 years）and Bachelor of Arts Degree Courses in Chinese（3 years）.At University of Kelaniya,the course "Chinese Culture" is included in syllabus for both Honors and General Degree Programs in Chinese.At the Sabaragamuwa University,only students who are accepted to BA honors degree program in Chinese can take the course"Chinese Culture",while other general degree candidates cannot join this course.As we all know,language is a part of culture,and the future goal of Chinese language learners is to find a job related to Chinese language,so what kind of job they will do in the future,their work will be related to China or Chinese people.BA（Hons）and BA（general）graduates in Chinese need to understand Chinese culture.Through the course "Chinese Culture" these two college students really understand Chinese culture and meet their requirements,which is the beginning of the study and the research target.In order to understand the ideas of Chinese learners in the two universities about the course "Chinese Culture",I took the culture class in these two universities and found that there are some problems in the teaching methods,the textbooks and the content of the culture class and the current problems faced by the teachers when they go online for the class because of the COVID-19 pandemic.In the thesis,through interviews,questionnaires,and references,students from the two universities in Sri Lanka were surveyed to analyze the syllabus of"Chinese Culture" and to propose suitable improvement measures for the problems that have been identified.The various sections of this paper are as follows.This thesis consists of six main sections.The first chapter is the introductory section.It specifically introduces the reason of choosing the topic and the significance of this thesis.Chapter two is the literature review section.The author presents the literature review section on research on culture in foreign language teaching,research on culture teaching methods and models,research on the relevance of Chinese language teaching to culture teaching,and research on Chinese culture teaching materials.The author also presents the results of research on Chinese language teaching in Sri Lanka.Chapter three is the research design.This section introduces the significance of the study,the research idea,the research questions,the research subjects and the research materials.The author did a survey on 30 students majoring in Chinese and 30 students not majoring in Chinese（General bachelor’s degree）at the Sabaragamuwa University and University of Kelaniya,Sri Lanka respectively.To ensure the credibility of the research results the author also conducted interviews with teachers.The study included the current situation of Chinese culture classes,teaching methods,teaching contents,teaching materials used,and students’ and teachers’suggestions and opinions on culture classes.The fourth chapter is a comparative analysis section of the teaching of Chinese culture courses in two Sri Lankan universities.This section introduces the basic situation of Chinese language and culture teaching in Sabaragamuwa and Kelaniya respectively:the current situation of Chinese language teaching,the teaching situation of Confucius Classroom and Confucius Institute,Chinese language curriculum,the teaching situation of "Chinese Culture"class,the content of culture course,the teaching materials in class,the teaching process and methods and the results of interviews with teachers and students of "Chinese Culture" class in Sabaragamuwa and Kelaniya.Chapter five is a survey and analysis of the teaching of Chinese culture Subject at Sabaragamuwa and University of Kelaniya.Through the results of the study for the two universities,the author found that both universities in Sri Lanka have problems in the curriculum,course content,teaching process and teaching.In addition to that the content of the Chinese Culture course in both universities cannot meet the requirements of the students,plus now the whole country has to face the impact of the Covid situation on the teaching.Chapter six is the suggestions for teaching Chinese culture subject in Sri Lankan universities.In this section,the author makes some suggestions that can be referred to include:improving the culture course syllabus,optimizing the teaching process,choosing teaching materials reasonably,enriching the teaching methods,and strengthening the cultural knowledge base of teachers.The final section focuses on conclusions and research outlook.In this section,the author summarizes the various parts of the thesis and discusses the author’s concluding remarks on this study,hoping to provide useful references for the further development of Chinese language teaching and Chinese culture teaching in Sri Lanka in the future. |
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