The 10th International Conference on Teaching and Learning Chinese successfully finished on August 20 2010 in Shenyang, China. The conference was jointly held by The International Society for Chinese Language Teaching and Hanban. The theme of the conference was "New Teaching Materials and Pedagogy in International Chinese Teaching and Learning". Nearly 400 society members and essay writers from 38 countries, including the USA and Canada, attended. The conference was intended to highlight the teaching experience of outstanding teachers at the forefront of Chinese language teaching all over the world. It consisted of three main parts: theme speeches, seminars and forums and the "International Chinese Teaching Demonstration Class". The OUC's Chinese Language Centre gave a full demonstration of its newly developed MyEChinese distance teaching platform, winning wide attention and approval.

Theme speeches were given by six experts from North America, Europe, Africa, Mainland China and Taiwan, introducing current trends in international Chinese teaching and frontier concepts. In the two theme forums "New Concepts of International Chinese Language Teaching" and the "Compilation and Promotion of Chinese Textbook", experts from home and abroad and executives from publishing institutions were invited to conduct dialogue with each other. This was the first discussion of this kind in the history of the conferences.

In theme seminars, representatives held lively discussions on nine topics, including innovation in Chinese pedagogy and Chinese textbook compilation, the analysis and use of Chinese textbooks, skills in Chinese teaching, key elements in Chinese teaching, research on Chinese classroom teaching, Chinese teaching resources and information technology, Chinese language testing and the practical use and market promotion of Chinese textbooks. Li Fujia and Ma Shuting of the OUC's Chinese Language Centre participated in the seminar discussions and talked about content design and system development based on their experience with the research and production of the MyEChinese distance teaching platform.

Liu Fei from the Centre gave a demonstration on how to use the MyEChinese platform in Chinese teaching

In the "International Chinese Teaching Demonstration Class", 50 demonstration classes presented the conference with vivid, flexible and effective classroom teaching methods. Our Centre's Liu Fei introduced the teaching concepts behind the MyEChinese distance teaching platform, and gave a demonstration of the innovative teaching methods of the offline classroom.
 

President Xu Jialu and Vice Director Ma Jianfei happily received accounts for using the MyEChinese platform

The conference also organised an "Exhibition of International Chinese Teaching Resources" and a "Promotion of International Chinese Teaching Products" in order to provide more opportunities for representatives to communicate and share their teaching experience and resources. More than 60 representatives from publishers of Chinese teaching materials and teaching research institutes attended the promotion event. The MyEChinese distance teaching platform promoted by the OUC's Chinese Language Centre attracted a lot of attention. Xu Jialu, President of The International Society for Chinese Language Teaching, and Ma Jianfei, Vice Director of Hanban, all visited the exhibition stand of the Centre and happily received accounts for using the MyEChinese distance learning platform.

A group photo with leaders and staff from modern education technology centre of Liaoning Open University

The OUC's participation in the conference and exhibition in Shenyang has gained support and cooperation from Liaoning Open University. Director Li Shouhong, Director Ji Jie, Director Wang Lianjun and Mr. Xia Liang all came personally and brought TVs, projectors and other equipment to make presentations at the stand of the Chinese Language Centre of the OUC, demonstrating the OUC's characteristics of distance, openness and advanced technology. At the same time, their kind support showed us the benefits of being a part of the warm family of open universities.

Senior figures from the Party committee of Liaoning province, the government of Liaoning province, the Liaoning Bureau of Education, Northern United Publishing & Media (Group) Company Limited and universities in Liaoning were all invited to attend the opening ceremony. During the ceremony, Hanban and Northern United signed a strategic cooperation agreement to promote the spread of Chinese language and culture in the world.

Further Information:

Except for the first International Conference on Teaching and Learning Chinese, previous conferences were all held jointly by The International Society for Chinese Language Teaching and relevant co-organisers. Since 1985, the conference has been held every three years. The fifth, the eighth and ninth were held in Beijing. The sixth was held in Hannover, Germany. The seventh was held in Shanghai. The tenth was held in Shenyang.

The International Society for Chinese Language Teaching was established in 1987. It has 3129 individual members and 182 institutional members from 56 countries in five continents.

Issued by the OUC's Chinese Language Centre