Teaching Design Of Advanced Chinese Courses Based On Visible Thinking

The number of learners including those with advanced Chinese abilities has seen a steady rise in recent years.Chinese teaching is gradually entering the national education system of various countries,which means that we not only need to teach basic language points,but also combine language teaching with content comprehension to help students understand and transfer what they learn.In order to improve Advanced Chinese teaching,the teaching objectives have changed for students’ higher thinking ability.Previously,Harvard University developed ‘Project Zero’,a program aimed at deepening students’ thinking,including "Visible Thinking." Visible Thinking aims to make students’ thinking visible through specific tools,so that teachers can adjust students’ thinking patterns and develop them in a correct way.In this paper,based on the visible thinking theory of ‘Project Zero’,I designed several teaching activities for two types of Chinese classes in Y International School in Shanghai and conducted two rounds of action research respectively.The effectiveness of teaching design was evaluated through classroom observation,student questionnaire and teacher interview.The following four findings were found: Visible thinking activities have advantages in practice,which contributes to differentiated teaching,enriching teaching activities and exploring students’ deep thinking.Visible thinking is also limited by the number of students,teachers’ ability and knowledge implementation.Different visual thinking tools have phases,so teachers should use different tools according to the instructions of ‘Project Zero’.During the selection of tools,learner characteristics,diversified learning objectives,class characteristics,teaching content will affect teachers’ choice,and in the application stage,teachers’ ability and thinking strategies can help activities be more effective.The design of Chinese teaching activities for advanced Chinese learners based on visible thinking is innovative both in terms of research perspective and research content,which provides new thoughts for the extension of visible thinking tools and their application in Chinese teaching.