50 Activities for the International Chinese Classroom [Chinese-English Edition]. ISBN: 9787521306590

English Title: 50 Activities for the International Chinese Classroom
Chinese Title: 国际汉语教学活动50例
Author/Editor: Chen Dongdong; Cynthia W. Fellows
ISBN-10: 7-52-130659-7, 7521306597
ISBN-13: 978-7-52-130659-0, 9787521306590
Binding: softcover
Pages: 293
Shipping Weight: 500g
Size: 170mm x 230mm
Language: simplified Chinese, English
Publisher: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press (外语教学与研究出版社)

50 Activities for the International Chinese Classroom (bilingual Chinese and English edition) presents an innovative approach to the learning of Chinese along the lines of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT). The ideas of CLT—creating a friendly and supportive student-centered learning environment with meaningful contexts in order to develop communicative competence—have been widely implemented in the teaching of mainstream foreign languages, but less enthusiastically or even reluctantly used in Chinese teaching. Therefore, promoting communicative Chinese teaching through activities is the first goal of this book.

All foreign language teachers must face the following challenges: arousing learners’ interest, motivating students what has been learned. Chinese language teachers, however, are faced with an additional challenge—the difficulty of the language itself. What can we teachers do to make learning Chinese less of a struggle and more of a gratifying adventure for our students? And since far too many Chinese language learners give up on their studies, how can we maintain students’ interest throughout the long journey to communicative competence?

This book is aimed at addressing these questions practically by providing meaningful and engaging classroom activities that specifically target the unique linguistic features of Chinese which pose such a challenge for English-speaking learners; for instance, tones, characters, unique grammatical structures, etc. Our rationale, based on current cognitive research, is three-fold.

Spaced-Repetition
Just as "cramming" does not work for students in the long-term, neither does it work if it is the teacher who is doing the “cramming” in the classroom. Covering material in a concentrated fashion hoping that mastery will ensue is counter-productive. To truly learn, our brains need both a rest period of non-exposure, and then need to be called upon later to recall. In other words, the brain needs practice retrieving partially learned material before it can be truly considered mastered. While the ideal amount of time in between recall sessions varies depending upon the circumstances and individual, teachers should plan on spacing out their coverage of certain topics over time. As learning is not accomplished in one fell swoop, activities are a needed addition to formal teaching, exercises, and testing. For the purpose of spaced-repetition, we have created two different activities for each particular linguistic item.
 
Variety Is the Spice of Life - and Learning
With spaced-repetition being so important, variety becomes necessary. Asking for recall in different contexts makes learning more memorable and thus more effective. Variety is also necessary because as we all know what works for one student may not work as well for another. This is also true for teachers. While many teachers will have excellent results with competitive games, other teachers might struggle to get the students engaged if they themselves see games as silly time-wasters. In order to be an effective teacher, one must be true to one’s personality. Using a medley of different types of activities thus substantially increases the odds of successful teaching and learning.