TV Chinese Teaching Programs for Students Overseas

Liang, Xiaoqing

Source:
Liang, Xiaoqing 2000. "TV Chinese Teaching Programs for Students Overseas". presented in International Distance Education and Open Learning Conference 2000.

Copyright:
Reprinted with permission

As China becomes more open, ties between China and other counties will increase and grow. More and more people find it necessary to learn Chinese. Many people come to China to learn the language, but there are many more people who do not have this opportunity. There are also many overseas Chinese who want their children to have a good command of their native language. Many foreigners who are studying or working in China also find it critical to study Chinese for work, or for use in their daily lives. The number of people who want to study the language and want to find an easy way to improve their level of Chinese communication is growing daily.

To meet these demands the Information Office of China's State Council and the Ministry of Education have begun a project to teach Chinese through television. The Chinese Ministry of Education organized experts to edit a series of Chinese teaching programs for television, most of which have been broadcast overseas. One part of the project is using a satellite network named SCOLA to broadcast these programs in north of America. SCOLA is a non-profit educational organization transmitting international television programs for educational use via satellite in USA. SCOLA operates a satellite transmitter and a number of satellite receivers, including for a lot of famous universities. Books, tapes, and videos are also available to help more people have the opportunity to learn Chinese in their own home at their own convenience.

Some of these programs are designed for systematic learning for true beginners, and some of them are designed to help people further improve the skills they have. Some are designed for a specific situation, such as Business Chinese and Chinese for Tourism, or special programs for children. Some of the programs are designed to cover certain aspects of Chinese, such as the Chinese phonetic system, hanyu pinyin, or Chinese characters. However, most are appropriate for all people, from primary school and high school students to adults.

Chinese-teaching experts edited all of the above programs. They incorporated the experiences and achievements of the best teachers who have taught modern Chinese to foreigners. The programs have been written by leading academic authorities. Their novel design and good production make learning easy and interesting. The producers have paid much attention to explaining Chinese culture, which provides learners with access to Chinese culture while studying.

Utilizing state-of-the-art satellite technology, these academic courses will remove language barriers in the actual study of the subject and promote true literacy in the language.

As China becomes more open, ties between China and other counties will increase and grow. More and more people find it necessary to learn Chinese. Many people come to China to learn the language, but there are many more people who do not have this opportunity. There are also many overseas Chinese who want their children to have a good command of their native language. Many foreigners who are studying or working in China also find it critical to study Chinese for work, or for use in their daily lives. The number of people who want to study the language and want to find an easy way to improve their level of Chinese communication is growing daily.

To meet these demands the Information Office of China's State Council and the Ministry of Education have begun a project to teach Chinese through television. The Ministry of Education organized experts to edit a series of Chinese teaching programs for television, most of which have been broadcast overseas. One part of the project is using a satellite network named SCOLA to broadcast these programs in the USA.

People in other countries who are now studying or who might study Chinese through television can be divided into four groups.

1. Chinese Language Teachers and Chinese Language Education Researchers

The members of this group have a fairly high level of knowledge, have studied Chinese for a considerable length of time and have studied and lived in a Chinese-language environment. Most of this group use Chinese language in their studies. Through television, they learn about developments in modern Chinese society, politics, economic affairs and culture, as well as the resulting changes in the Chinese language. Through television programs with historical and cultural background, they deepen their knowledge in these areas.

2. College and University Students and Other Students Studying Chinese as a Foreign Language

This group can be divided into two smaller groups. One group consists of students taking Chinese as their major and the other group is studying Chinese as a foreign language elective course. Most of those in the latter group are studying the language because they find it interesting, unlike the students in China who study English because they have a strong, specific motivation such as going abroad to study or to obtain a certain type of job. Those in this group have a fairly high level of knowledge and good learning ability. Though they have received teaching and tutoring from Chinese language teachers at school, most have not had the opportunity to study Chinese in China. Therefore, appropriate audio-visual materials (such as are shown on educational television programs) which teach the language by acting out situations through concrete images in specific environments (teaching through situations) are very useful for them and constitute an important supplement to classroom learning.

3. Various Types of People in Society Who Want to Learn Chinese

The people in this group wish to learn Chinese for a variety of reasons. Some plan to travel in China, some want to do business with Chinese companies and some are just interested in China. The people in this group vary in age from grade school students to retired persons, with corresponding differences in their level of knowledge. They usually do not have the opportunity to receive systematic Chinese language training and some are only interested in gaining a rudimentary Chinese language ability. For instance, because Chinese characters are difficult to read and write, some in this group will not want to study them at all, instead being content with obtaining just the ability to engage in basic conversation. (Through Chinese pinyin, Chinese pronunciation is easy to learn for people who can speak a language using the Latin alphabet.) With the exception of a teacher in some type of formal class, television classes present the ideal way for this group of people to learn Chinese. It is an extremely flexible way of studying which is not restricted by time or place.

4. Chinese Descendants

People of Chinese descent have been affected by Chinese culture and strongly desire that their sons and daughters, as well as their descendants for generations to come, carry on speaking Chinese. This is the most direct reason for the children of overseas Chinese people to study Chinese. As China becomes more and more affected by global politics and economics, young people who are fluent in Chinese, as well as the language of the country where they live, will undoubtedly have a distinct advantage over others who can not speak Chinese.

The children of overseas Chinese, especially the children of recent immigrants (those with a fairly high level of education who have left the country since China began implementing its policy of reform and opening up in 1979), live in a Chinese language environment, since Chinese remains the usual language of communication in the home. But for those children born outside China, Chinese seems as difficult to learn as it does for any other non-Chinese child and therefore they often study Chinese only because their parents demand it of them.

Because of the flexibility of distance education through the medium of television and because this method can solve the problem of a shortage of qualified teachers, it is a very effective teaching method. Before we developed this series of Chinese language teaching programs for television, however, no such materials were available in other countries.

College students learning Chinese mostly use materials compiled by professors at certain famous universities or materials compiled in mainland China or Taiwan province of China specifically for foreigners. These materials are all printed texts and do not include systematic situation-based audio-visual materials, especially materials which reflect modern spoken Chinese.

As for persons in the general public wishing to learn Chinese in a non-structured way, universities both in China and other countries have compiled quite a few television teaching programs. These programs vary widely in content and form to suit a variety of students. As we understand the situation, there are already a number of high-quality programs produced by Chinese universities independently or in conjunction with foreign universities, some of which are now being used in distance education in North America.

As for teaching materials for the children of overseas Chinese, there is a dearth of both printed texts and audio-visual materials. We investigated the 'Hope School' (offering Chinese language classes for the children of overseas Chinese) which is run by overseas Chinese in the USA and found that they have been using grade school texts designed for students in China for the last few years. In 1998, China organized a team of experts to compile printed texts specifically for the children of overseas Chinese, but corresponding audio-visual materials have not yet been developed.

Through surveys and analysis of the different types of target students and their study requirements, we came to the conclusion that we could help the great majority of target students by producing an integrated multimedia set of textbooks, audio tapes, video tapes and CD-ROMs. In particular, distance education through the medium of television would be a useful and effective supplement for university students and professors as well as for members of the general public and children of overseas Chinese. Teachers can also extract the parts of the audio-visual materials they need for use in their own program.

To this end, we began compiling elementary, intermediate and advanced Chinese language teaching materials, as well as complementary television programs covering Chinese pinyin, reading and writing Chinese characters and Chinese sayings. The purpose of all this work was to form a comprehensive series of Chinese language educational television programs (video materials supplemented by textbooks and audio tapes). In compiling this large-scale series of television programs and other materials, we took into consideration several factors.

1. Materials are Aimed at the Needs of All Types of Students.

Most of the teaching materials produced in the past have been mainly aimed at Chinese language teachers, so we designed our series of teaching materials to meet the varied individual needs of students. Watching an educational television program which is too long can cause students to lose interest, so lessons are divided into several portions which can be viewed one at a time. Each portion lasts no longer than 15 to 20 minutes so that lessons do not exceed the student's attention span. If the content of the lessons is monotonous, students soon get tired of the programs, so we have paid very close attention to making the programs interesting to watch. Teaching is mainly through situations, making each lesson a short story. This is especially important for those who do not have a clear purpose for studying Chinese, such as those who are just studying the language because they find it interesting, and children. After investigating the way teachers in the USA teach Chinese, we concluded that as a general rule each individual television lesson should not include too much. Instead, the lesson should contain a great deal of repetition so that students understand and remember the content. Therefore, we did all we could to ensure that the lessons do not proceed too quickly, and we started each lesson with a review of the contents of the previous lesson.

Listening and speaking exercises for the course were carefully designed so that students are able to study on their own by watching the television programs and reading the textbooks without the personal guidance of a teacher. To make it easier for students who do not have a teacher, elementary and intermediate level materials feature both English and Chinese. All sentences given as examples are written in both English and Chinese, with pinyin to indicate pronunciation of Chinese characters.

2. Audio-visual Materials and Printed Materials Form an Organic Whole

Audio-visual materials refer to the television programs and the audio tapes and the printed materials refer to the textbooks. For studying a language, television programs are livelier, more direct and easier to understand and remember than printed materials. Though this may be true of some other subjects, it is especially obvious with language training. For this reason, we paid particularly close attention to the design and production of the television programs. At the same time, printed teaching materials are very basic and hold an important position in the overall structure of the language training. The process of education is confirmed by the printed materials. During the learning process, the television programs and the printed materials complement each other. Doing without either component can seriously affect the outcome of study. Audio tapes are important in language study because they are easy to use and greatly help improve listening ability.

Thus it can be seen that the television programs, the printed texts and the audio tapes each have a part to play. Making the most of each component helps to make the student's independent study efforts easy and effective. For this reason, we have paid extremely close attention to designing the course around an integrated multimedia approach, fully taking into consideration the role of television, textbooks and audio tapes in the learning process. Once it was determined what the course would cover, we carefully divided the contents and exercises according to which portions could best be covered by the television programs and which could best be covered in the textbooks, and carefully designed the audio tapes to improve the student's listening ability. These three parts were not designed to stand independently, but to work as an interconnected whole.

3. Close Attention was Paid to Teaching Chinese through the Pinyin System

For students who use the Latin alphabet in their home country, learning the pinyin pronunciation system is very easy, after which the student can use it to read Chinese characters. Therefore, pinyin is a powerful tool for foreign students studying Chinese and one which is widely used for teaching Chinese in a number of countries in addition to mainland China.

In order to take full advantage of pinyin as a learning tool, we have extensively used it in both the television programs and the printed teaching materials. All example sentences are shown in Chinese characters, English and pinyin. This allows students to rapidly understand the meaning and read the sentence aloud in Chinese.

4. Materials Reflect Modern China and Modern Chinese Language

Language changes along with the changes in society, especially in an information society, where new words are created daily. We have compiled this series of teaching materials to allow students to learn the language spoken by the Chinese people in the last part of the 1990s. This gives our series a distinct advantage over similar materials now being used outside of China.

Mainland China has gone through some extraordinary changes over the last two decades. In the more economically advanced areas of the country the change is even more dramatic. Even though there may have been many people who visited these areas fifty years ago, going back today they would hardly recognize the area. Since this series was compiled in the late 1990s, it not only allows students to study modern Chinese, but also allows them to get a direct look at modern Chinese life and culture.

For this reason, we were particularly careful to bring out the cultural aspects behind the language used in all materials in the series so that while students are learning the language they can also get a feel for the rich variety and abundance of Chinese culture.

In 1996, the Information Office of China's State Council and the Ministry of Education of China set up the 'China Channel' on the SCOLA satellite television network in US. This channel is being used to teach the Chinese language and now broadcasts 8 hours per day on a 24-hour cycle. SCOLA is a non-profit educational organization transmitting international television programs for educational use via satellite in the USA. SCOLA operates a satellite transmitter and a number of satellite receivers, including for a lot of famous universities.

In order to meet the demands of different levels and types of students in the North American viewing region, we prepared an elementary series beginning from ground zero, an intermediate series and an advanced series of Chinese language instruction. Since these courses are suitable for a wide range of students, they can serve as a supplement to other instruction or stand on their own for independent students. Viewers can watch the program from the beginning or select certain programs to meet their particular study needs. Those who teach Chinese in schools can make use of the situations portrayed in the programs to enrich their own courses.

In order to meet the requirements of those looking for a short-term course, we have prepared a variety of 'lash up' lessons covering subjects such as business, daily life and tourism, all of which are designed to take half a year or less. As we mentioned before, universities and television stations have been using many such programs and many can be used to help students raise their Chinese level. Courses like these on Chinese television all use editions of this series carefully selected by the Chinese Ministry of Education.

For the use of university students and researchers who are studying Chinese as part of their discipline, we have prepared courses on Chinese idioms, poetry appreciation and Chinese history and culture so they can raise their level in these areas.

We have prepared special programs for the children of overseas Chinese and we used cartoons and puppets for younger children to hold their interest in the course.

The SCOLA satellite television network each month sends out the programs ahead of time to various universities. The number of schools receiving the programs is now over 400 and their programs are seen through the cable television networks of over 40 cities in the USA. Because of the abundance and variety of educational programs shown on Chinese television, students can always find a program to suit their individual needs. For this reason, more than 20 US institutions of higher learning, including Washington University and Yale University, have now signed agreements with SCOLA to specially receive programs aired on Chinese television.

The results of over two years of broadcasting Chinese language education programs in the USA have been excellent. Many universities have requested materials from us and recommended that we expand our program of giving the Test of Chinese Language Proficiency (HSK test) in the USA.

With the development and spread of information technology, computer networks and education networks have been providing a new medium for distance education. This medium is even more effective than satellite television broadcasts and makes it even more convenient for students to study. For this reason, it represents an important new direction for the development of distance education. We are now making plans to put these television programs on the Internet. When preparations are complete, even more countries and interested people will be able to view these programs and learn Chinese.