In the 2021 autumn semester, the Confucius Institute at Ss. Cyril and Methodius University made a bold attempt to maintain the “hot trend to learn Chinese” during the pandemic – by introducing a series of online Chinese culture courses: Singing Chinese Songs, Calligraphy, Reciting, and Pronunciation. A Tai Chi online course was taught earlier in the semester, making five new online courses. Students may choose Chinese culture courses based on their interests and preferences.
Singing Chinese Songs is taught by Fan Shengnan, a new online Chinese teacher. She combined Chinese songs with Chinese language teaching in an exciting way and sang as a prelude to the Chinese Songs online classes. Teacher Fan taught the students Chinese polite expressions in the first class. Since most of the students are vivacious and precious young children, she took the melody from the nursery rhyme The Little Painter, added age and Chinese level appropriate lyrics, and created the Chinese song Hello Hello. The catchy and easy-to-learn lyrics excited the students to show great interest. Under the teacher’s guidance, the online classroom was full of singing and laughter, and the students experienced the charm of Chinese culture.
The Calligraphy course is taught by the new online Chinese teacher Huang Ming. Through this course, she opens the mysterious door to Chinese characters for the students and leads them to understand, experience, and write the beauty of Chinese characters. Teacher Huang began the class with a short video that introduced the history and origin of Chinese characters, which instantly stirred everyone’s interest in learning calligraphy. The students were shown China’s Four Treasures of the Study: Pen, Ink, Paper and Inkstone, and the teacher had them recognize and distinguish among a large number of calligraphy works the oracle bone inscriptions, gold inscriptions, seal characters, official script, regular script, cursive script and running script. All the students were so impressed that they eagerly took up paper and pen and wrote their own names. They earnestly wrote the Chinese characters that are steeped in Chinese culture.
The Reciting class is taught by Yue Yao, a new online Chinese teacher. The goal of the Reciting course is to lead students to feel the gentleness, rhyme, and cadence of the Chinese language by reading aloud to improve the students’ ability to speak Chinese. Teacher Yue led the students to do engaging facial exercises, tongue exercises, singing tones, tongue twisters, breathing exercises, etc. At times, the classroom was ringing with laughter.
The Pronunciation course is taught by the new online Chinese teacher Miao Dan. This course is designed for students who have already acquired basic Chinese language skills. It aims to improve the accuracy of students’ pronunciation and explore new ways to learn the language. Under the guidance of Ms. Miao, students have been able to accurately recognize Chinese tones and have more authentic pronunciation.
The Confucius Institute series of new courses provide a platform for local students to further understand Chinese traditional culture and enrich their extracurricular activities. The new courses attract more students to actively participate in this colorful “Palace of Chinese Culture.” Having a dream related to Chinese will encourage the students to advance on Chinese learning to fulfill the vision.