20th BCLTS Annual Conference
From 29th of June to 1st July, three teachers from the Confucius Institute at Newcastle University presented at the 20th BCLTS Annual Conference. Taking place at the University of Edinburgh with approximately 100 attendees from over 20 countries and regions, the conference was co-organized by the British Chinese Language Teaching Society (BCLTS) and Confucius Institute for Scotland at the University of Edinburgh with the theme of “Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language in the New Normal: Cross-Disciplinary Theory and Practice”.
Encouraged and supported by director Ruojuan Zheng, CI teachers submitted abstracts to the BCLTS committee and were invited to present their work in various forms: Wanxiu Chen made a presentation on her empirical study titled “A Case Study on the Acquisition Process of Cohesion Devices in Oral Narrative Discourse Produced by Chinese Learners of Upper-intermediate Levels”; Xiaolu Tan shared her rich and instructive workshop on “Design and Development of Teaching and Learning Material”; while Wenwen Zhang displayed her poster on theoretical discussion about “Challenges to Chinese Languages Teachers’ Intercultural Communicative Competencies (ICC) in the British multicultural context”. All staff received appreciation from practitioners, researchers, and peer teachers at present. All three teachers commented that they achieved constructive feedback and learned a lot through exchanging knowledge, sharing practices, and keeping updated with the new developments in Chinese language education.
To offer students Mandarin classes with the best quality, Confucius Institute at Newcastle University provides profound support to teacher development, especially in enhancing teaching pedagogy and research skills.
