The short-term teaching mentioned in this article indicates the Chinese language teaching as a foreign language with the teaching cycle of less than eight weeks. Teachers in qualified Mandarin program may tell you that this model of teaching is limited by the teaching time, making the teaching objects should contain some Chinese language techniques that aim at certain scope. In the aspect of teaching contents, it demands teachers to choose the functions and topics often used and needed in daily life, study and communication as well as the relevant language elements with high application frequency and cover rate.
From the perspective of organizing the teaching activity, the short-tem teaching needs the teachers to design the teaching implement solution dynamically in accordance with the changes of teaching cycle and the multi-classes of students’ features. Therefore, it has the characteristics of pertinence and flexibility. In addition, the ordinary short-term teaching needs to seek the high efficiency by strengthening the teaching methods.
The short-term teaching and the ordinary education teaching are two different types of teaching models. Some students who come to learn Chinese language in China may know that the latter is a kind of teaching combining serialization and periodicity, with the teaching core of the systematic language knowledge and skills in Chinese language. The teachers should teach these contents to the students by dividing into stages to make the teaching a process of gradual accumulation until all of these contents are mastered by the students systematically.
However, due to the feature of short time, the teaching points of short-term teaching are not the whole grammar system and the skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing, but focuses on some certain skills especially the ability of listening and speaking. In the teaching process, it emphasizes the teachers to set the courses flexibly according to the needs and learning time of the students and process the targeting teaching by choosing parts of the contents in grammar system.
At present, there are many types of short-term teachings with different emphases. Some emphasize certain teaching techniques and some take the context and topic as the teaching focus. Some foreigner learners who study Mandarin online may know the teaching with the focus of functions as well as the common sentence patterns and vocabulary. In some cases, the language learning and the cultural visit are combined. Even though the emphases are different, it emphasizes to reach the goal of learning.