Chinese teachers' evening

Published on 17.04.2016

On April 17 2016 (Sunday), Groningen Confucius Institute would like to organize a Chinese Teachers' Evening in the form of a keynote speech followed by dinner. This event is a part of the 2016 Preliminary of the 9th "Chinese Bridge" Chinese Proficiency Competition for Secondary School Students in the Netherlands on the same day, and also is the warm-up for the Chinese language teachers training organized by Groningen Confucius Institute in May 2016. More information on this event can be found below:

Keynote Speech: Glimpses of Culture in Chinese Language - a brief contrastive analysis with English
Speaker: George X Zhang
Date: April 17, 2016 (Sunday)
Time: 17:30-20:00
Location: Sint-Nicolaaslyceum, Beethovenplein 2, 1077 WM Amsterdam
Registration: please send an email with the registration form (see attachment) to
chinesebridge@confuciusgroningen.nl, before April 15 2016. (Free Entrance)
Flyer Chinese Teachers' Evening

It is widely acknowledged that one cannot separate culture from language learning and teaching. However, there are different understandings of what culture means, and debates continue amongst teachers of Chinese regarding how culture should be integrated in Chinese language teaching. This speech will show examples of contrastive analyses of Chinese and English languages, Chinese language itself is full of expressions of Chinese culture, and that in an ideal teaching situation, as one learns Chinese, one is also learning about the culture and the people. This is because there is a clear indication of close relation between the Chinese language and the way the Chinese think and behave. The speech also wishes to draw attention to the needs of language learning in multilingual and multicultural contexts with an increasing understanding of the importance of inter-cultural communication competence. This has also helped us to rethink what culture is about in Chinese language teaching in such context.

Professor Zhang is the Director of the Centre for Modern Languages in Richmond, the American International University in London. Previously he was the Director of SOAS Language Centre, University of London and the Director of London Confucius Institute. His language teaching career span over thirty years, during which he also managed many language projects, including the first EU co-funded European Benchmarking Chinese Language Project (EBCL). He is a vice president of the European Association of Chinese Teaching (EACT) and a long-standing advisor to the UK Association for the Promotion of Chinese Education (UKAPCE). He was the Chair of British Chinese Language Teaching Society (BCLTS) between 2006 and 2008, and became an Honorary Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Linguists (CIoL) in 2010. Professor Zhang has published on language policy, language learning and teaching, teacher training, and intercultural communications and cross cultural business management. Chinese in Steps is a series of textbooks he authored that won an Outstanding International Chinese Teaching Material Award in 2010.