Investigation And Research On Online Chinese Corner For Foreign Students Of Beijing Foreign Studies University

Chinese teaching shifted from offline to online during the COVID-19 outbreak.In a broad sense,teaching Chinese as a foreign language can be conducted in both the first and the second classroom.The latter plays an important role in language acquisition.Chinese Corner,as a regular second classroom,has been retained in many universities during the online-teaching period.It is worth exploring how to perfect online Chinese corner,in order to create a better extracurricular Chinese learning and interaction environment for L2 learners overseas.Taking the online Chinese corner in Beijing Foreign Studies University as an example,this paper investigated the positioning of Chinese corner,the needs and preferences of those Chines e learners and the experiences of Chinese students who help to organize activities.Through participant observation and interviews,this research got authentic feedbacks from participants.It explains the operation process of the online Chinese corner in BFSU,and analyzes the involvement of overseas L2 learners and the impact on their acquisition of Chinese,making targeted suggestions as well.The Chinese corner model created by BFSU also serves as a case to learn for the online second classroom.This paper is divided into five main parts.The first part introduces the background,the content and significance of this research.The second part is the theoretical background and research review in related fields.The third part explains the research method of this paper,introducing the background of the activity in Beijing Foreign Studies University as well.The fourth part analyzes of the results of this investigation,which depicts the development of the Chinese Corner in the spring and fall semesters of 2021,summarizing the problems that still exist in order to put forward targeted suggestions.The fifth part is a discussion of the online Chinese corner,mainly focusing on the impact of it for learners’ Chinese acquisition,the interrelationship among the various participating elements in it,and the analysis of the activity model at BFSU.The results of the study show that:1.The number of participants in the online Chinese corner increases slightly each semester,but decreases over the semester.2.Overseas L2 learners are more interested in themes and forms that reflect actual life in China,including Chinese festivals,food culture,etc.3.The forms of the Chinese Corner are getting richer and richer,and the response to it is quite positive.4.The interaction and participation of overseas L2 learners in the activities is influenced by the way of group cooperation,the active status of the hosts,the content and theme and so on.5.Participants,including the teacher who takes charge,the hosts and the Chinese learners,do not have the same understanding of the online Chinese corner.The cognitive differences between them have caused the gap between the actual effect and the expectation of the activity to a certain extent.The online Chinese Corner,serving as an online Chinese second classroom,provides a space for overseas learners to learn Chinese and communicate with each other outside class.It also provides an opportunity for master’s students major in Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages to be in contact with Chinese learners.However,there are still some problems in the development of it in the past three semesters.Such as the lack of authenticity and interactivity,the failure to meet some of the participants’ purpose,as well as the gap between the effect and expect owing to the network issues,etc.These problems still need to be solved.