By Dai Yunjuan, International Chinese Language and Culture Center, Tsinghua University

The Tsinghua University's International Chinese Language and Culture Center (ICLCC) held its First Annual International Chinese Teaching and Research Conference from August 8-9. Forty-seven delegates from China and abroad, including renowned experts Lu Jianming and Zhou Zhiping, attended the conference. The experts held in-depth discussions about course design, textbook research and compilation, instructor training, ways to improve teaching methods, and cultural communication.

At the opening ceremony, after welcoming the experts, Tsinghua's President Assistant Song Yonghua introduced the Chinese teaching methods used at the International Chinese Language and Culture Center and expressed his high expectations for the conference. Ma Jianfei, Deputy Director of China’s Hanban described the guiding ideology behind the conference as “high level, high starting point, high gains”. He also pointed out the increasing need for more input and effort from Chinese teaching experts at home and abroad.

The conference was focused around speeches and group discussions. The delegates avidly discussed in depth such traditional issues as course modernization, written language teaching, and conversational troubleshooting and such new issues in Chinese language teaching as the ”construction-chunk” teaching approach and the history of Chinese teaching. The delegates generally agreed that the papers contributed at this conference were high level and academically sound. They proposed new ideas for teaching and research which will accelerate communication and cooperation in Chinese teaching at home and abroad.

Since its inception in 1988, Tsinghua University's International Chinese Language and Culture Center has enrolled more than 15,000 students from about 70 countries and regions to study Chinese language and culture. ICLCC has also established partnerships with foreign universities in the United States, Japan, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the Republic of Korea. The ICLCC and the London School of Economics furthermore have jointly established the world's first Confucius Institute for business. Through the ICLCC's degree programs, about 400 foreign students have received bachelor’s degrees in Chinese language and literature and about 30 foreign students have received master’s degrees in applied linguistics. At present, Tsinghua University is in the initial stages of forming a unique, multi-level, diversified teaching platform which combines compulsory, elective, general, and major course modules with classroom teaching and organized social activities and is flexible enough to meet the needs of a mix of short-term, exchange, undergraduate, and graduate students.