The teaching Chinese as second language still has the tendency that pays more attention to teaching knowledge than to cultivating abilities. This doesn’t accord with the students’ demands of language application ability. To improve the efficiency of Chinese teaching and learning, we must do something to change this tendency.
To launch the Chinese teaching activity with learners as the center, we should firstly learn the study purpose and demand of learners who are learning Chinese. Considering that senior students have gotten a certain ability of self-expression, we chose 227 Grade Three and Grade Four male and female students who are learning Chinese in China as our research objects and made a questionnaire for them.
The purpose of the research is to learn the demands of students who are learning to speak Chinese for the advanced Chinese courses. As the demands of learners depend on their study purposes, as well as the knowledge foundation and abilities that the learners already have before they entered into this level.
For the term of study purposes of the students who are learning to speak Chinese, 7 choices are listed by the questionnaire. They are: 1) to be engaged in Chinese teaching and research; 2) to be a translator; 3) to be engaged in jobs like diplomacy or foreign trade; 4) to learn about China; 5) to be engaged in jobs which are related with China; 6) to travel in China; 7) others.
If we look through these purposes of learning to speak Chinese listed above, we will easily find that the above choices have different requirements for language abilities, which can be roughly divided into three levels: the highest requirements are No.1 and No. 2 followed by No.3 and No. 5; the requirements of No. 4 and No. 6 are lower and No. 7 need to be analyzed according to the specific answers of students who are learning to speak Chinese.
The statistical result indicates that people who choose to learn to speak Chinese for being engaged in jobs related with China are the most. This is a little different from the statistics announced by the discussion group for investigating the situation of learning to speak Chinese and applying Chinese among foreigners 16 years ago. At that time, the largest population who learn to speak Chinese aimed to learn about China and be engaged in jobs like diplomacy and foreign trade.
Obviously, more and more people choose to learn to speak Chinese are not only to learn about this civilized ancient country. The fast development of Chinese economy and all kinds of job opportunities provided by the communication between China and every country in the world are attracting more young people who want to get the jobs. While the principal requirement for realizing this goal is to have the ability of language communication.
The other noticeable change is: the choice that learning to speak Chinese in order to be engaged in Chinese teaching and research ranked the last one in the investigation made in 1993, while it has moved toward obviously in this investigation. It even ranked No.2 in the investigation among female students from Southeast Asian countries and male students from European, American and African countries in Grade 3.
These changes all mean that overseas students who are learning Chinese in China nowadays have higher requirements to the level and ability they can reach and have.
In the questionnaire, students stated their real situations and requirements for the advanced Chinese courses objectively. Their introductions on the aspects they need to be enhanced, the useful teaching approaches and the helpful aspects for them all make us have deeper cognition to textbooks, teaching approaches and the role of students in the process of teaching and learning; the situation of the selected courses by them and the formulations to the purpose of selecting these courses also provided us with valuable information, which makes us have further knowledge to the requirements of Chinese learners.