EACS-2016. Book of Abstracts

Section 2 21st Biennial Conference of the European Association for Chinese Studies 29 We hope that the demonstration and discussion of this series of Chinese textbooks, with a view of its further improvement, will contribute to the enhancement of the situation with teaching Chinese at school. Li Linda Mingfang (Regent's University London) Business Chinese Key words: business Chinese, textbooks, syllabus, teaching methodologies, assessment methods With the fast growing amount of business trade between China and the rest of the world including the EU, China is attracting more and more attention from the international business world. It is not surprising therefore that Business Chinese is nowadays becoming an increasingly popular course. Businessmen, stu- dents of business studies, and business minded parents all know only too well the importance of being able to speak Chinese in order to do business with the Chinese. As a result, Business Chinese language courses are being offered in an increasing number of higher education institutions (HEIs) in various forms and levels throughout Europe. These courses and their accompanying textbooks range from ab initio to advanced level with contents that cover from everyday life to case studies of very specific business environments such as finance and trade. However, what should be included in business Chinese teaching and how can business Chinese be taught more effectively?While these questions have been raised to some extent before, they are well worth revisiting as answering them would provide much needed guidelines on how to design course and materials, teaching approaches and assessment methods. This is what this paper intends to explore. The author has taught busi- ness Chinese at different levels at a business school for more than 15 years and has developed a number of Chinese textbooks, including those on business Chinese. During this period the author has also explored teaching methodologies and it is the author's intention to share her views and experience with colleagues. Through shared perceptions and understanding, revisiting the subject will further help the advancement of the teaching and learning of Business Chinese in European universities. Li Tao (University of International Business and Economics) Interesting Chinese Textbooks for the Post 2000’s Key words: Chinese textbooks, secondary school, text compilation, the post 2000’s, language envi- ronment The post 2000’s, or 零零后 in Chinese, are now children born after the Year 2000. They are regarded as more confident, cleverer, but having a short attention span and difficulties with concentration. Therefore: we need to develop new books to teach them more effectively. This paper is based on our series of textbooks focusing on text selection and compilation, with the main features as the following: 1. Attracts the post 2000’s students with careful selection of texts and stories, which are: a) authentic (proofread or written by a native speaker); b) based on Russian (local) environment; c) use distinctive characters that help the students build a personal bond with Chinese study; d) an exciting storyline that links all the stories and texts to meet the interests of 10–15 year old chil- dren and that covers a broad range of topics as far ranging as from “the Internet”, “Peter the Great” and “Environment Protection”. 2. Suitable for a non-Chinese language environment: a)alarge amount of exercises for different language skills. b) it includes an appropriate number of new Chinese characters and words in each lesson. There are up to 10 newwords in every text. Fifth to Sixth Grades have 10 lessons with two texts each (not all the characters are introduced from the very beginning in the Fifth Grade) and Seventh to Ninth Grades have 12 lessons with three texts each. At the beginning, in the middle and at the end of each Grade there are refresher lessons with no new grammar and few lexicon. c) New words are introduced through ascending spirals. For example: the new word first appears in supplementary vocabulary and then later in basic vocabulary.