The First Training on Teaching Materials for Local Teachers of Universities in Tajikistan Is Successfully Held

Dushanbe, April 21st, 2013 - The first training on teaching materials for local teachers of universities in Tajikistan, which was sponsored by the Confucius Institute at Tajikistan Nationality University, was successfully held at the brand new and beautiful China Hall at Firdousi Tajik National Library.

Currently, there are 4 major universities in Tajikistan that have set up a Chinese major or offered elective courses for the public in Chinese language, and 8 universities that have offered public Chinese language courses. The students learning Chinese at different universities are increasing rapidly in number year by year. This year, the number of Chinese learners at colleges and universities is about 650.

The workshop was attended by a total of 15 representatives including local Chinese language teachers, Directors of Chinese Departments, Language Departments and foreign language teaching and research section, those who are in charge of Chinese teaching management, etc. from five universities in the capital city Dushanbe, including Tajik State National University, Russian-Tajik Slavonic University, Tajik State Institute of Foreign Languages, Tajik State Pedagogical University, Tajik State Medical University, and Branch of Moscow State University in Dushanbe.

The Training Workshop

The workshop was designed to give a systemic introduction to the teaching materials highly recommended by Hanban suitable for students of Tajikistan to use, for the local teachers and the teaching administrative personnel, so that the teachers could better understand the characteristics of teaching materials and the supporting resources, and master more systemic teaching methods with the teaching materials. The training workshop lasted 2 days and consisted of 5 special lectures. The workshop not only covered the key introduction of Hanban, the sharing of classroom practices and teaching methods with the teaching materials, and the development of Chinese teaching materials in Tajik language, but also added some highly targeted content based on the practical situation in Tajikistan as well as the existing problems of Chinese teaching in Tajikistan, for example, how to improve the existing curriculum provisions of the Chinese major, the common problems in the non-major Chinese courses at universities in Tajikistan, and HSK test and the combination of resources and teaching, etc.

Professor Rustam, Tajik Director of the Confucius Institute Introducing the Teaching Materials Compiled in Chinese.

During the training and communication sessions, teachers of the Confucius Institute not only gave a systemic introduction to the teaching materials compiled in Tajik language and Russian but also shared with the local teachers the teaching materials for comprehensive courses that have had positive responses in practical use, namely the “Boya Chinese- Elementary Starter”, the “Chinese for Managers Everyday Chinese Volume” and the “New Practical Chinese Reader (Russian Edition)”, which were selected from Hanban teaching materials, and the teaching materials for pronunciation and reading courses. The local participants were greatly interested in the “Elementary Chinese Reading Course”, the “Chinese for Managers- Phonetics” and the “Boya Chinese”. Many teachers said they hoped that the Confucius Institute would help their university to introduce these teaching materials as soon as possible, so as to enrich the existing courses. In addition, they had lively discussions with the lecturer teachers from the Confucius Institute with respect to many practical issues, for example, how to organize HSK tests and examinations, and how to make reasonable course arrangement based on the Tajik students’ characteristics in learning Chinese, etc.

Teacher Participants Completing the Questionnaire and Book Review Carefully

After the two-day training workshop, the local Tajik teacher participants spoke highly of the event and said such event was highly targeted and could effectively solve many practical problems in teaching and improve the development of Chinese teaching in Tadzhikistan in an down-to-earth manner. The teachers said they all hoped to have further opportunities for study and exchanges in the future. The success of this workshop has strengthened the connection between the Confucius Institutes and the local Chinese language teachers at different colleges and universities in Tajikistan, and laid a sound foundation for the continuous improvement of Chinese teaching at different colleges and universities in Tajikistan.

Contributed by Liao Dun, Photo by Zhu Peng, Mayinu’er