TFLTA Conference
Cuilu Shi (Lulu)
I observed a Chinese exhibition called Distance and Online Education with
Great Wall Chinese on Nov. 8th. Through this presentation, I was attracted by the
multimedia teaching methods that introduced by the exhibitor.
On the website, students can learn to listen, read, speak and write by
themselves. I believe that the most difficult part of learning Chinese is writing. On the
Great Wall Chinese website, they provide animated Chinese handwriting that allows
the students to learn to write Chinese characters stroke by stroke. Students can also
watch cartoons to listen and read conversations. I noticed that those conversations are
really related to real life dialogue. They even have taglines, modern slangs and
cyberwords that young Chinese people tend to use nowadays. The best part of those
conversational cartoons is that students can play a role in the conversation. By
involving students in the role-play conversation, students can use what they learned
into real daily dialogue.
Besides multimedia teaching methods provided by the website, teachers
personalize each student’s learning instructions and testing materials based on
students’ needs. For example, teachers design match words games for the students
based on words and phrases students learned from cartoon conversations and reading
materials. For lower level students, the words games focus on matching Chinese
pinyin to English meaning while, for higher level students, Chinese characters are
presented in the game to let the students challenge themselves through recognizing
Chinese characters. In this way, all the students get the chance to go through standard
learning requirements without losing the chance to challenge themselves based on
their learning progress.
The interaction between students and teachers makes Great Wall Chinese
website an efficient and convenient self-learning program. However, the teachers
also believe that students should grasp the chance to learn from their “classmates”.
Students have a chat group on their mobile phones. Everyday students share
experience and ask questions in the group chat. The teacher encourages students to
find answers through discussion before giving the right answers.
The teacher believes that language learning is culture learning. She gives
students key words about a certain Chinese culture topic and let the students to do
researches on Google and YouTube by themselves. I think through this way students
can find their interests and motivate themselves in language learning. The teacher also
let the students to watch several traditional Chinese movies. I do not agree with this
idea. Through my own experience with native American students, I found that most of
them have a misunderstanding about what is going on now in China. I think a lot of
Americans look China through its feudal history in ancient times. For example, they
ask questions about Chinese foot-binding women. I agree that watching movie is a
good idea to introduce Chinese culture. But I do not think that traditional Chinese
movie alone is enough. Students should get to know the great changes about China
and what is happening now in China.