EACS-2016. Book of Abstracts

Section 2 21st Biennial Conference of the European Association for Chinese Studies 31 are generally more ready for more challenging, more time consuming exercises in the future and may go on to choose a profession associated with the received skills and abilities. The demonstration and discussion of our methods for increasing motivation will be interesting and helpful for teaching Chinese at school. Vlasova Natalia (Saint Petersburg State University) Actual Problems and Prospects in the Field of Teaching of the Chinese Language in Secondary School through the Eyes of a University Lecturer Key words: teaching, Chinese language, secondary school, Unified National Exam, Chinese textbooks In recent years the world has been experiencing so-called “Chinese language fever”, many countries introduce Chinese as a foreign language in school curricula. We expect the number of schools with Chi- nese language to increase in Russia as well, because compulsory study of a second foreign language was introduced in September, 2015, and the Chinese language seems to be the obvious and promising choice. Moreover the students can take Unified National Exam in the Chinese language and may enroll in higher education establishments upon the examination results, including the field-oriented universities. However, the innovation process faces a number of difficulties due to the lack of quality Chinese textbooks that could help students in their unsupervised activities and during the preparation for the unified national exam, the lack of uniform method of teaching Chinese in secondary school and uniform standards, the shortage of qualified teachers, the lack of state regulation in the field of the Chinese language teaching. In addition, it seems to us that common educational web-portal is necessary, as currently there are many amateur sites, as well as YouTube channels, which often present false data that people without professional training can not evaluate adequately. The report summarizes the observations made in the course of nearly a decade of working as a lecturer in the university with first-year students, some of whom studied Chinese as a foreign language in secondary schools in different regions of the Russian Federation, and presents some options for solutions of the problems described above. Zhang George Xinsheng (Richmond University London) CEFR, EBCL and Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language in Europe Key words: CEFR, EBCL, teaching Chinese as a foreign language (TCAFL), framework of standards international Chinese An increasing number of higher education institutions in Europe now offer courses in Mandarin Chi- nese language. However, it is not uncommon that most of the universities would find it difficult to describe adequately how their Chinese language courses can be mapped on to the Common European Framework of References (CEFR) just as other major European languages, as it is a requirement that all the language courses are expected to do so. There was a European effort to get the Chinese learning and teaching in Europe in line with the CEFR — the European Benchmarks for Chinese Language project (EBCL 2010–2012). It was the first EU funded project to benchmark a non-European language based upon the CEFR by the joint effort of a number of universities across Europe involving France, Germany, Italy and the UK. It is a project that is not yet completed but necessary to continue. This paper will introduce the project and the rationale behind it. It is also the intention of the proposer of this paper who coordinated the project between 2011and 12 to encourage all the professional Chinese language teaching practitioners to get involved and to further develop the benchmarks so that there is a full framework based upon CEFR to the learning and teaching of Chinese in Europe. The paper will also look at the EBCL in comparison to a number of other frameworks of standard for Chinese and examine how and why they differ from one another, particularly the two versions of HSK in China and Chinese as foreign language test (TOCFL) in Taiwan, both of which claim to be referenced to the CEFR. The paper will finally discuss some of the main implications of the EBCL for the teaching of Chinese in Europe, especially in institutions of higher education.