A Revisit to Business Chinese Textbooks and Teaching

Wei Gong 龚薇

论文摘要 Paper Abstract: In the past decades, China has been playing an increasingly significant role in international business and trade. Meanwhile, with rising enrollment of students with more diverse educational backgrounds, learning needs, and higher levels of Chinese language proficiency, new concepts, materials, and pedagogical approaches must be developed to cater to the new situation. In this research project, two main issues will be examined: 1) what approach should we adopt in Business Chinese classes; 2) what materials should be included in the curriculum. To address the aforementioned issues, this research project will revisit Business Chinese teaching in two aspects: the first part of this project will focus on investigating if ESP or other approaches would be the most suitable for Business Chinese teaching. In the second part of the project, both a synchronic and a diachronic survey on Business Chinese textbooks will be conducted to trace the development of Business Chinese teaching, from which we could also see the future trends in Business Chinese teaching. The researcher will discuss what teaching materials can be adopted to engage students with various backgrounds and needs in active use of what they gain from Business Chinese class.

发言人简介 Presenter's Bio: Wei Gong, Lecturer in the department of East Asian Studies at Princeton University. Before joining Princeton, Wei taught at many institutions, including Brown University, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Middlebury Chinese Summer School, and Inter-University Program at Tsinghua University in Beijing.