Needs Analysis Of Chinese Learners In Confucius Institute At The University Of Botswana

The Chinese language teaching in Africa dates back in the1950’s, since the establishment of the Forum on China-Africa cooperation, Chinese language teaching in Africa has entered a stage of rapid development, African states are demanding for more and more Chinese language talents, and many localpeople in Africa would like to leam Chinese language correspondingly, however, like other countries on all continents, Chinese language teaching in African countries is facing some challenges regarding teachers,teaching materials and learning resources.Confucius Institute at the University of Botswana(CIUB) was the first organization to offer Chinese language coursesto the localpeople in Botswana history. In July of2009, it started Chinese language teaching. Since then, Confucius Institute at the University of Botswana has accumulated a lot of experience in teaching of Chinese, including textbook selection, teaching materials writing and design, teaching method improving and so on. However, the Chinese language teaching in Confucius Institute is still facing some challenges and problems in keeping the learners learning at higher levels, Business Chinese courses and materials meeting the student’s needs, and the like.Needs analysis is a normal way to collect the information about the real needs of the learners. This paper intends to analyze the data from the two questionnaires administered to more than200Chineselanguage learners at CIUB. The results demonstrate the learners’backgrounds, their motivation and destination of learning, theirevaluation to instruction and the courses. These information areexpected to be helpful to CIUB for Chinese language course design,teaching material development, levels setting, teaching methodimprovement, and so forth.