A Study On Language Proficiency Development And Educational Planning For International Students In China

The education of international students in China is an important part of the internationalization of Chinese higher education.Their language education is conducive to playing the publicity role of foreign students in China,actively spreading Chinese ideas,enriching humanistic exchanges between China and foreign countries,and promoting people-to-people communications.The existing research mainly discusses macro policies,the management and certain language learning skills of international students while few studies focus on the international student community and investigate how the language education policies of international students is actually implemented.This study takes the major of Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages(TCSOL)as the research scope and undergraduate students of TCSOL as research object,and focuses on the following three questions: 1)What is the general situation of the language proficiency of international students of TCSOL? 2)What are the factors that influence the language proficiency of international students of TCSOL?3)What is the language education planning path for international students of TCSOL?In order to address the above three research questions,this study adopts a mixedmethod research design which follows the designing sequence of qualitative research,quantitative research and qualitative research.Both sequential-exploratory design and sequential-embedded design are employed with reference to the concurrenttriangulation design.These three research questions are analyzed and answered based on the data collected from different stages,namely individuals,group and individuals.To be specific,the questionnaire is designed on the basis of pilot study including interviewing and document analysis.The formal questionnaire is formed after revising the pretesting one.Effective responses from 221 participants are analyzed by SPSS 23.0to explore the main dimensions of language education policy for international students in China.For research question 1,the language proficiency of international students is demonstrated by descriptive statistical analysis of their present level of Chinese and self-assessed Chinese level and qualitative data from teacher interviews.For research question 2,motivation section of Chinese learning and factor analysis of the implementation of language education policies are used to analyze the factors that influence language proficiency,combined with the results from international students' in-depth interviews to explain and supplement the influencing factors.For research question 3,by analyzing and comparing the implementation of international students' national language education policies in three typical universities as case study,together with teachers' in-depth interview and classroom observation,the planning path of international students' language education is explored.As for the language proficiency of international students,the data from questionnaire shows that there is no significant difference in terms of gender and scholarship,and there is a significant difference between their actual Chinese language proficiency and self-assessed Chinese language proficiency.The data from teacher interviews show that the present Chinese proficiency of international students can meet their needs of daily life and learning,and their Chinese proficiency progresses faster in the first and second years,while slower in the third and fourth years when polarization of language proficiency is developed.The factors influencing the Chinese language proficiency of TCSOL undergraduates can be divided into internal and external factors.The internal factors mainly come from personal learning motivation including integrative motivation and instrumental motivation.The results from the factor analysis of the questionnaire show that the external factors that affect TCSOL undergraduates' Chinese learning are teaching materials,teaching methods,academic evaluation,teaching management and curriculum.The case study found that the planning content of language education policy for international students includes admission policy,personnel policy,resourcing policy,materials policy,methods policy,evaluation policy,teaching management policy and curriculum policy.International students are admitted into Chinese higher education institutions according to the access policy formulated by the national education administration.Higher education institutions carry out the criteria of teacher recruitment and training in accordance with the personnel policy made by the national education administration.Under the interaction of resourcing policy,materials policy,methods policy,evaluation policy and curriculum policy,the basic language competence of international students is cultivated.Basic language competence in this study refers to Chinese listening competence,Chinese speaking competence,Chinese reading competence,Chinese writing competence,Chinese communicative competence and Chinese information literacy.Then,through learning support and activity organization from teaching management policy,the teaching competence,academic competence,intercultural competence and global competence of international students are gradually developed so as to cultivate high-quality talents with Chinese feeling and international vision.Based on the above findings,this study proposes that the research framework of language education policy should include access policy,personnel policy,rescourcing policy,materials policy,methods policy,evaluation policy,curribulum policy and teaching management policy,which are the eight dimensions that together contribute to the development of international students' language proficiency.In addition,this study compares the implementation of language education policies for international students in China,which can help policy makers to formulate language education policies that are beneficial to the language proficiency development of international students in China based on the actual situation of international students' learning in China.In the future,this study will further deepen the empirical research on the language proficiency development path of international students in China.