A Study of Chinese Language Teaching at British Universities: How Communicative are Chinese Teachers' Methods?

Abstract

Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) emerged from a paradigm shift in language teaching in the 1970s, which turned professionals’ attention towards more communicative proficiency, than mere mastery of structures which stresses accuracy rather than fluency in language learning. Ever since, it has impacted on both the teaching of English as a foreign language (TEFL) and how other languages are taught in the world. Teaching Chinese as a foreign language (TCFL), despite its long history, has only in recent decades been considered a discipline in its own right, yet Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) is being taught increasingly widely in and outside China. Traditionally, TCFL may have been dominated by the Confucian-heritage teaching approach, but to what extent has TCFL been influenced by CLT in university settings in the UK, where most modern foreign languages have been taught by it. Following a brief summary of the characteristics of CLT, the author reports the findings of a study using data collected from a questionnaire (with 60 respondents) and interviews with 10 Chinese teachers working in British universities. The integration of CLT into TCFL has been identified from how the interviewees’ classroom practice accommodated communicative activities and from their emphasis on authenticity, both of which reflect communicative orientation of the overall approach in TCFL. The teachers have also allowed the hybridity and co-existence of multiple methods in their classroom, just as most L2 teachers may have conducted in the post-method era. However, the Chinese teachers in this study do not sacrifice accuracy, despite using role-play and pair/group work to enhance fluency. Rather, they provide an ongoing focus on grammar and adopt explicit instruction, which, together with communicative orientation, forms the main characteristics of CFL teaching methodology in the UK.

Keywords

• communicative approach
• teaching chinese as a foreign language
• hybridity
• explicit grammar instruction
• british university