Teaching of Chinese language made headway in France

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, March 29, 2004

Teaching of Chinese language made headway in France

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On March 26, the all France Chinese Language Teaching Seminar was held at the Paris International University Town. The statistics given by attendees showed that the teaching of Chinese language in France maintained a good development trend.

As learned from Jean-Paul de Gaudemar, the education ministry's director of schools, students taking Chinese language course have kept on rising, whereas the number of students taking other foreign languages has dropped. If compared with traditionally learned foreign languages, i.e. German and Russian, the number of students studying Chinese is not numerous, but the development trend is good. Compared with last year, the number of students who study Chinese rose by 30 percent in 2004, while students studying Russian and German decreased by 3.5 and 8.6 percent respectively.

In the past ten years, number of students who took Chinese as their first foreign language rose over 75 percent, and those selecting Chinese as second foreign language went up by 170 percent. Currently 142 high schools in Paris offer Chinese language courses with student number amounts to 7,361. There are 500 pupils in Paris and some one thousand in other provinces who study Chinese language.

At the seminar, many teachers introduced their experience in teaching Chinese. They gave suggestions with regard to Chinese textbooks, teaching methodology, application of teaching aid, and Internet and Chinese language teaching. The attendees had an extensive communication in regard of the theory and practice in Chinese language teaching.

As part of the "Chinese Culture Year" program held in France, the seminar was co-organized by the French Ministry of Education and the Chinese Language Teachers' Association of France. More than 130 Chinese language teachers from Paris, Marseilles, Bordeaux and Caen attended the two-day seminar.

By People's Daily Online

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