Need to improve Chinese teaching in UK universities

Xinhua 29 June 2018

As the number of learners of Chinese may continue to rise in the future, there is urgent need to improve the quality of Chinese teaching as a foreign language in the United Kingdom higher education sector, participants at an international conference agreed last week, reports Xinhua.

The 16th International Conference on Teaching and Learning Chinese in Higher Education, organised by the British Chinese Language Teaching Society, attracted over 100 Chinese teaching and research professionals from the UK and some other countries, such as Japan, the United States, Germany and Malaysia. The three-day event, co-hosted by the School of Modern Languages, University of Warwick and the Confucius Institute at Coventry University, discussed a range of topics on teaching Chinese as a foreign language.

Figures released at the conference showed almost all the UK universities offer Chinese language courses, with about 60,000 university students, but making Chinese teaching mainstream in the higher education system still faces challenges. Zhang Xinsheng, vice-president of the European Association of Chinese Teaching, said there are already efforts to improve Chinese teaching quality in the UK and there are challenges in resources and sustainability, teacher supply and training, standards and assessment.
Full report on the Xinhua site

Receive email updates from UWN

Global newsletters    Africa newsletters    Other
    (other includes related events and webinars)

Data will be processed according to our standard terms & conditions.

Research focuses on production of jet fuel from halophytes

UAE University staff

With an eye to developing a clean, alternative aviation fuel to reduce carbon emissions, researchers at the United Arab Emirates University have been focusing on the production of jet fuel from sustainable resources such as halophytes, which are salt-tolerant plants that could be cultivated on a wider scale in the region’s coastal areas.

The value of being human: How teachers can work alongside AI

Michael Milligan

Artificial intelligence is now a part of our evolution in technology and teachers need to be encouraged to find ways to bring AI into the classroom and have students use it in a way that is beneficial to them in the long term.

Ground-breaking research on seawater biodesalination

UAE University staff

As water scarcity reaches critical levels globally, a research team at the United Arab Emirates University seeks to revolutionise seawater desalination practices, offering a path to mitigate water scarcity while championing environmental preservation.