Programme Aims

The programme develops the intellectual, critical and imaginative abilities of students in relation to Chinese language education. Specifically, it aims to develop students' awareness of and sensitivity to the differences between Chinese and other languages, and the differences between Chinese culture and other cultures. It builds on the diversity of experience that students bring to the course and extends their knowledge of Chinese language, literature and culture to develop their learning and teaching skills, enabling them to develop their careers.

Characteristics

The intended learning outcomes of the MA/PgDTCFL (HKS) are:

• The ability to use simple language to teach Chinese to non-native speakers, and to present complex ideas clearly and articulately in appropriate forms of Chinese;
• The ability to use all types of media, and information technology to obtain information needed for teaching Chinese as a foreign language;
• The ability to assess current issues in literature and linguistics theories in language pedagogy;
• The ability to appreciate and analyse works in Chinese literature and culture;
• The ability to discover, analyse and handle issues in Chinese language teaching and testing;
• The ability to disseminate Chinese cultural traditions;
• The ability to assess problems in teaching Chinese as a foreign language in classroom management, develop solutions to the problems and use those solutions to benefit students;
• The educational abilities of local teachers of Chinese in the HK context will be enhanced through systematic reflection on and acquisition of the necessary background knowledge on the linguistic and cross-cultural background of their students and train them to apply this in their educational activities;
• The intercultural communication skills of local Chinese teachers will be upgraded, so that they are capable of dealing with all possible learning difficulties of non-Chinese native speaker Hong Kong students.