Spain's High School Chinese Teaching Design And Practice Of Zero Starting Point

Along with the constant warming of the worldwide Chinese fever, Hanban (ConfuciusInstitute Headquarters) has launched a volunteer Chinese teacher programme. And theoptional Chinese Language and Culture classes have been rooted in the middle schoolsfrom all corners of the world like the bamboo shoots. In the school year2010-2011, also asa volunteer Chinese teacher, the author taught Chinese at two middle schools in Alicanteand Benidorm, Valencia, Spain. During the teaching practice, the author tried to create aninstructional design and then carry it out as well.Basing on the analysis about the current situation of Chinese teaching in Spain, the authorhosted some impromptu Q and A, one preaching tour and one diagnostic questionnairewith a focus on the first batch of Chinese learners at the ab initio level in the publicSpanish middle schools to find out how and why the students choose the optional Chinesecourse, so that the instructional design for the Chinese course could be created accordingly.According to the survey results, the course was splitted into Speaking Class, CharacterClass and Culture Class, these three types, and the detail instructional design would bewritten separately. The speaking class with vairous teaching methods was mainly aimed tod’evelop the students communicative competence. The character class with the help ofmultimedia was aimed to develop the student’s basic reading skills, mainly throughintroducing the basic knowledge of Chinese characters, a few common characters and howto look up a new character in the dictionary by the radical. The culture class with aheuirstic teaching method requested the students to try with their own hands and wasaimed to provide the students an opportunity to experience the Chinese culture in anauthentic atmosphere through the activities like paper cutting, calligraphy and Chinesecuisine, etc. The language teaching part was designed to follow a module combined withboth the Double Track of Speaking and Character mode and the Character after Speakingmode, while the cultural expeirence part was designed to follow the schedule of thetraditional Chinese festivals as well as the local school calendar.At last, the instructional design was put into practice, the situation was recorded, thefeedback was collected, and the teaching eff’ect was veirfied by the students oral andwritten tests at the end of the semester. The average score of all the students was86.78/100. The testing result has proved the irght teaching ideas, the effectively targeted instructional design, the appropirate teaching methods and the distinctive teachingoutcome. Not only has this study designed a relatively systematic teaching plan andlearning materials for the Chinese teaching at the ab initio level in the Spanish middleschools, but also may provide useful point of reference to develop teaching ideas andimprove teaching qualities of the optional Chinese Language and Culture classes in theSpanish middle schools in the future.