Renwushi wenti xuexifa ji guoji hanyu jiaoshi kuawenhua shengrenli fazhan

Today, teaching and learning Chinese as a foreign language (FL) does not take place only in the classrooms of Chinese departments at a limited number of universities in China, as was the case two decades ago. With the rapid establishment of overseas language institutes such as the Confucius Institutes and Confucius Classrooms, teaching and learning Chinese has become a global phenomenon. Chinese teachers are also experiencing dramatic changes. Where they mainly used to teach Chinese language and culture at a certain number of universities in China, they now teach at many different kinds of educational institutions (primary schools, secondary schools, high schools, universities, adult schools, etc.) all over the world. Chinese teachers are no longer teaching in or about one culture, but in and about many cultures and cultural contexts.

Therefore, context is playing an increasingly important role in teaching and learning Chinese as an FL in the global age. There is much more to it than just teaching THE language and THE culture; it is considered more important to help people living in many contexts learn how to communicate with Chinese people by using the Chinese language in diverse social and cultural contexts. FL teachers in a global age are expected not only to have the requisite knowledge of language and culture, but more importantly, to develop their interculturality, often referred to as cultural understanding, critical cultural awareness (Holliday, 2011) or global cultural consciousness (Kumaravadivelu 2008), and intercultural competency for efficient communication (Byram, 1989; Byram et al., 1994). This new demand creates numerous challenges and requires that teachers assume new roles and responsibilities.

The changing role of teaching in the globalized context challenges the identity of FL teachers, including that of Chinese language teachers. How can these teachers be equipped with the skills and competencies to face these challenges? In this paper we articulate, illuminate, and increase teacher consciousness of given contextual factors that may influence teaching and learning Chinese as an FL. We propose a learning-centered approach, Task-Based PBL, in the teaching and learning of foreign languages in general and Chinese in particular in an intercultural and globalized context. We argue that teaching Chinese as an FL in the global age involves not only the skills needed to transfer knowledge of the language, but also, and more importantly, a complex process of creating critical cultural consciousness and developing interculturality through continual self-reflection and constant negotiation with the context in which the students are situated. In the latter part of this paper, we also propose a framework for a Task-Based PBL approach to teacher development, which aims to develop language teachers’ interculturality in a global context.

全球化为对外汉语教学带来了革命性的发展也为其赋予了新的意义。随着孔子学院和孔子课堂在世界各地的建立，越来越多的汉语教师们赴海外工作，海外汉语教学的工作也面临新的挑战。教师们不仅需要具备教授中文和传播中国文化的能力，更需要胜任在跨文化的环境下和来自不同背景的人们有效沟通和交流。而这种跨文化胜任力很难以通过授课的形式获得提高。本文倡导运用一种以学习者为中心的方法和模型，即任务式问题学习法，来帮助海外汉语教师有效提高全球化背景下的跨文化胜任力。 文章详细探讨了这种方法在教师发展和培训活动中的运用及反思。