Sensitive Issues In Teaching Chinese As A Foreign Language And Cultural Teaching

Teaching Chinese as a foreign language has had six decades of history since 1950. Nearly thirty years, the linguists and Chinese teachers are working on how to integrate culture and language better, using culture to enhance language learning and improving Chinese learners'communicative competence. Moreover, with China's rapid economic development and more important position on the international stage, in particular the 2008 Olympic Games and 2010 World Expo held successfully, Chinese learners have growing interests in Chinese traditional culture. Only studying the traditional components of language can not satisfy them.Since the lingual world paid attention to culture teaching and studied it systematically in 1980s, a large number of monographs and papers have been published. However, for sensitive topics, particularly sensitive issues of national conditions, the studies are few. It is important to integrate into society therefore sensitive culture teaching is much tougher compared with other types of teaching. If it is not handled properly, Chinese learners could potentially deepen biases and feel disappointment towards Chinese culture. It also could affect their language learning. That is why we emphasize sensitive issues teaching.This article divides the sensitive issues into daily life taboos and sensitive issues about country conditions. We begin with the development of culture teaching and present research status of sensitive issues. And then in the second chapter we discuss the importance of sensitive issues in Chinese teaching. The third chapter is the foremost part, we will discourse the principles, methods and techniques which could be applied to sensitive issues teaching. The last chapter talks about applying these principles, methods and techniques into practice by displaying four teaching plans.Based on related references on culture and sensitive issues teaching, especially the feedback from Chinese learners, we are trying to use appropriate methods and techniques to teach sensitive issues and build a harmonious and lively class atmosphere.