Research Into Teaching Chinese Online And With Virtual Classrooms

The booming Chinese economy in recent years has caught the attention of manyforeign companies, and increased global interest in studying Chinese. Today learningChinese is not limited to the traditional classroom. Besides the traditional courses forChinese language at universities or language institutes, several new methods for learninghave emerged. Students now have opportunities to learn and practice Chinese online,experience mobile learning as well as one-on-one distance learning.The aim of this paper is to introduce Chinese learning websites such as AICHINESE,CHINESEPOD and other websites which are frequently used in the Netherlands, it willalso present an analysis and comparison of the variety of websites and their differentfunctions, as well as each website’s content and study goal. A survey has been conductedto investigate the current attitudes of Dutch learners towards learning online, as well as anysuggestions they may have concerning the subject. The new education method of onlinelearning has been analyzed and researched. In addition to introducing Chinese learningwebsites, the difference between learning online and classroom learning will also beanalyzed, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of these two teaching methods.In order to keep up with the development of the computers and internet, education hasalso renewed and improved, catching the attention of many teachers in the process. Thisresearch has stated clearly that by using the internet, multimedia the efficiency of learningcan be increased at a certain level. Teachers ought to learn more about new media andinternet possibilities, in this way they can better understand the learners of this newgeneration, moreover meet their demands and preferences during learning activities andstimulate their motivation.Through research and analysis of data resulting from the survey, this paper discoveredthat learners do not have a proper understanding of online learning, and prefer classroom teaching over learning from websites. This paper has overcome many prejudices ofChinese language students towards distance learning. However, apart from the learningmethods on websites, there is also another method which belongs to distance learning:virtual classroom education. This paper will introduce this relatively new way of distancelearning and make a comparison with classroom teaching.