An MTC Case Study of International Cooperation for Teaching Chinese as a Second Language

Abstract

With the steady increase of teaching programs of Chinese as a second language in the American colleges and universities, a consensus of recruiting quality and well-trained native teachers of Chinese to teach on the foreign turf has become a new trend. To meet this vogue, the Mandarin Training Center of National Taiwan Normal University initiated an “Un-service Teacher Re-training Program” in corporation with the ROC Ministry of Education and some American colleges universities. This unprecedented TCSL teacher training project offered theoretical training to the experienced teachers who had been teaching Chinese as a second language in the Mandarin Training Center for years.  

The nine-month training project (Mar. 1 – Dec. 22, 1984) has equipped these potential teachers with improved teaching strategies through the courses offered: TCSL theories, Chinese phonetics, Mandarin syntax, sociolinguistics, material adaptation and development, plus a series of guest lectures related to culture learning and cross-cultural communication.

The experimental in-service training program has boosted not only enthusiasm for teaching Chinese as a second language overseas, but also upgraded the quality of the MTC programs in large scale. Moreover, seven of these 35 trainees have already been hired to teach Chinese in American colleges and universities on the cost-sharing basis. Result of this project has motivated the MTC to plan the second stage of TCSL teacher training for teaching on the foreign turf.