A Research Study On Chinese Teaching At Secondary Schools In Santiago, Chile

With the rise of a global “Chinese Fever”, the Teaching of Chinese as a SecondLanguage (TCSL) has changed from the initial “coming in” to nowadays “steppingout”. Currently, there are over40million people learning Chinese overseas, TCSL isreaching almost every corner of the world.With the progress of overseas TCSL, issues related to teaching begin to arise; atthe meantime, there are a growing number of studies on as well. Most of the existingresearch data on overseas TCSL are about Asia, Europe and America, with only a fewon Latin America. Latin America is the so-called "rising star" in the field of TCSL, itstarts late, and is still in the process of development, many of the areas are yet to beestablished and improved.Furthermore, the age group of those studying Chinese has shifted gradually fromadults to teenagers. Teenagers are in a transitional stage of physical and mentalmaturation, which in turn puts them in a considerable advantage when it comes tolanguage acquisition. However, at the same time, they also experience certainproblems different from those of the children and adult learners.In order to collect more information about Chinese teaching at secondary schools,the writer conducted questionnaires and interviews, and gathered information on fourmunicipal secondary schools that offer Chinese classes. Besides, at the end of theterm, the writer conducted surveys among them to get feedbacks on the course itselfand suggestions for the future.