It is another jubilant Chinese Year, and Chinese people all over the world are immersed in the atmosphere of celebrating the Year of the Tiger. Many Chinese teachers also organize students to perform and display various Chinese cultural activities at this time. The worldwide spread of Chinese is not only dependent on the external display of Chinese culture, but also inseparable from the hard work of every Chinese teacher, and overseas is no exception. How do they really work? What kind of existence is Chinese in foreign schools?
Text | ABB
| Tianyue
01 Part-time Chinese teacher's Chinese feelings
One of my friends, Mr. Zhao, works in the UK and is a part-time Chinese teacher. She told me: "The good schools here basically have a lot of small languages for students to choose to learn, such as French, Spanish, German, Italian, Russian, etc., mainly In European languages, but there are fewer Chinese classes." ”
I asked, "Why?" ”
She told me: "It's not because there are too few students selected." Due to the geographical distance between China and the UK, many foreign students do not know much about China, and some of their impressions of China are even stuck in a relatively underdeveloped period, so they prefer to choose the language of European countries that are closer, the language family is closer, and the level of development and ideology is also close to learning.
She said: "Another point is that British students learn Chinese differently from us learning English. We came to the UK with the G5, so English was just needed. But few British students make the Qingbei jiaofu an undergraduate study goal. So the same to learn a foreign language, British children may not know what the meaning of learning is, feel novel and fun to learn for two days, and Chinese characters are too difficult to give up, this situation is many. ”
Therefore, it is very difficult for her to find a British school that can fill the number of Chinese classes for a long time and stay full-time.
This is not an isolated case. The author's investigation found that because of the limited number of students, many Chinese teachers overseas can only use part-time work to earn money. A very good Chinese teacher, Mr. Qian, shared with this author:
"I used to put 7 bags in front of my house, take a different bag every day to go to different schools, and do tutoring on weekends, which is particularly hard. And I have met people from various professional backgrounds, from Chinese mainland/ China, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan/ Southeast Asia, who have also come to be Chinese teachers, and the competition is more intense. ”
Mr. Qian has lived in the UK for more than 20 years. He said he changed schools over the years and finally worked full-time at the best local high school. Because the principal of this school is particularly far-sighted, understands that Chinese is very important, China is getting stronger and stronger, and hopes that their students can adapt to the development of the future world, so they vigorously promote Chinese language classes. Moreover, the students of this school are relatively good, learn well, and give up less halfway. "The author is relieved by his bitterness.
There are many overseas Chinese who can teach Chinese, but there are not many schools that teach Chinese, and a teacher can also hold several jobs at the same time, so there are fewer positions. So even if it is a part-time job, the teachers cherish it. Generally speaking, the highest position they can find is the leader of the Chinese group of a prestigious university (except for Chinese teachers who stay at the university by studying for a doctoral degree at a foreign university).
02 Chinese language training has a market, but the profit point is low
When a Chinese teacher has accumulated some teaching experience and connections, some will personally open a Chinese language training school in the Chinese community.
In the face of most British schools that do not have Chinese classes, many Chinese and even people of other ethnic groups are eager to have professional institutions to teach their children to learn Chinese.
As a result, such training schools came into being, organizing children to learn Chinese in the evenings, weekends and holidays. In addition, they will also tutor them to take the HSK exam, teach Chinese culture, art, and celebrate Chinese festivals.
Some large training institutions also organize students to study in China, providing them with guidance services for applying for Chinese universities, as well as post-study services, such as helping them find accommodation, finding jobs, etc., which is equivalent to guiding Chinese children to study abroad Inverted and copied to China.
However, Mr. Sun, the owner of a Chinese institution engaged in this industrial track, described to the author: "There is a market for local Chinese language training in the UK, but it is not easy to do study abroad planning." Foreigners come to China to study and Chinese to study in the United Kingdom and the United States is very different, most of the British students who want to study academic education in China only want to get a degree diploma from China's top universities, and there are only a few top universities, and they do not need Chinese to help them choose a school. ”
Moreover, Chinese universities do not emphasize the aspect of background improvement in the college application assessment of foreign students, so they do not necessarily have to do the quality activities required by American universities.
In addition, China's good universities are also thoughtful in their services to foreign students, care about their daily lives, and help them solve their learning and living difficulties, so there is no situation like Chinese students who need post-study services to study abroad.
"Therefore, these three profit points are not too high in the industrial chain of foreigners studying in China." He said that if you want to copy English education and form a global upstream and downstream industrial chain, you need more research and attempts. It cannot be taken for granted that Chinese study abroad need this planning and that guidance, and foreigners studying in China must also have this demand.
03 China International School "out to sea", fierce soldiers
I have heard many people say that the Chinese international education market is too big and too scattered to be easily developed. But precisely because of the breadth of people it faces, there are vast opportunities and spaces in the future.
It is understood that VIPKID's Lingo Bus, which is aimed at foreign children's learning Chinese, has accumulated more than 100,000 students from more than 100 countries and regions in the past four and a half years since it was launched in June 2017.
LingoAce, which also offers online Chinese courses for overseas youth, has also increased its monthly income 20-fold in 2020 with the rise of online education during the epidemic.
Recently, New Oriental also held a large-scale enrollment activity in the United States, and the scene was crowded and attracted the attention of many people.
In addition, "Chinese fever" and "Chinese fever" are also reflected in the opening of overseas branches in Chinese schools. For example, in the first batch of overseas Chinese international school pilot units of the Ministry of Education in 2019, there are RioCel International School in Brazil, China International School in Dubai, and In 2021, there is also Cambodia China International School.
These three international schools all offer full-time courses in China, among which the Dubai China International School also offers Arabic and ethics with local characteristics, and students can take the Chinese college entrance examination after graduation or apply to foreign universities.
Although many teachers of Chinese as a foreign language institutions are currently teaching online through video in China, the author believes that online teaching cannot completely replace offline face-to-face teaching, especially for language learning. Foreign children do not have the opportunity to learn Chinese for a long time in school, so it is not realistic to achieve much results just by taking online classes a few times a week.
Language learning requires an environment and atmosphere. When Chinese educational institutions open offline outlets abroad or Chinese schools open overseas branches, it is feasible to adopt the online + offline model. Developing courses, providing standardized software, training teachers, and collective lesson preparation in China, while foreign campuses hire Chinese teachers to carry out practical teaching, not only solves the problem of teaching and research, but also finds a balance between cost and quality.
epilogue
Recently, I have listened to the stories of many Chinese international education colleagues, and the author has been thinking, how should Chinese international education develop? In fact, the most important thing is to solve the problem of "whether you can bring real benefits to international students after learning Chinese".
At present, there are two groups that are more interested in Learning Chinese, one is the user of children, like Wukong Chinese's four major categories of products:
- Enlightenment Chinese: for children aged three or four;
- International Chinese: Benchmarking the international IB system, divided into Level 1-Level5;
- Advanced Chinese: The use of internal compilation textbooks is suitable for children who have studied primary school Chinese in China for a period of time and then go abroad;
- Basic Chinese: For non-Chinese users, the proportion of listening and speaking learning is relatively large.
For such users, good teaching quality, convenient access to the way, the display of traditional culture can attract a group of people, but because it is not just needed, so whether there are a large number of users willing to learn for a long time, it is more difficult to say. Therefore, the benefit of this part of the user is mainly to stimulate their interest in Chinese, traditional culture and China, and to be able to continue to improve in language.
Another group of people interested in Chinese use learning Chinese as a way to understand China, and they often learn it with a purpose. Generally speaking, people who are a little older, some are in high school, college, and some have already worked, especially from countries that lack educational resources, lag behind us in some professional fields, are friendly to China, and have relatively large interests, they are willing to learn Chinese and even come to China to study and work, because they can learn all kinds of advanced professional knowledge and skills, work in China in the future, and can also bring advanced technology back to China to achieve better career development.
For such people who are more in need, Chinese learning is best combined with vocational education, just as English is not a tool for us to communicate with foreign countries, and Chinese should also become a tool for foreigners to understand other areas of China. As long as the road to study abroad and employment is opened, foreign students will have a place to learn Chinese, so as to attract more high-quality foreigners to work and invest in China, forming a virtuous circle.
In the past, the mainstream of our international education was "bringing in", and the curriculum of many international schools was mainly A-Level/AP/IB, and courses with Chinese characteristics were also offered. However, with the rise of China, "going out" to hold international schools with Chinese curricula as the mainstay and courses with foreign characteristics as a supplement, and then "bringing back" foreign elite talents to Study, employment and development in China, will become a new direction.
The globalization and profitable industrial chain construction of Chinese international education is still in its early stages, which requires us to continuously accumulate resources, exchange and cooperate with each other, and constantly try to explore a sustainable and stable and profitable operating model. The so-called "Rome was not built in a day" requires the persistence and efforts of generations of Chinese as a foreign language and international educators.
About the Author:
ABB: Master of Chinese International Education from Fudan University, senior international education practitioner and observer, has held management positions in many education groups in Shanghai and Guangdong, responsible for business operations, curriculum research and development, study tours and other aspects of work.