From April 12th to 13th, 2019, the Second International Symposium of the European Association of Chinese Teaching (EACT)washeld at the University College Dublin in Ireland. Prof. Li Yuming, Director of ACLR, attendedthe conference with his delegation and delivered a keynote speech. Nearly 200researchers andscholarsfrom more than 20 countries and regions such as China, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia, Japan, South Korea and Ireland participated in the Symposium.
Prof. Li Yuming was invited to give a keynote speech on Some Reflections on Teaching Chinese as a Second Language in the Age of Language Intelligence. He pointed out that we are entering, via the "InternetPlus", the era of language intelligence, when machine translation gradually gets its way into the language life, which is a landmark of this era. Machine translationbothpowersand hindersthe second language learning. On the one hand, the development of teaching Chinese as a second language, the training of teacher skills, the compilation of teaching materials as well as the establishment and evaluation of courses can be achieved with the help of the Internet and artificial intelligence. On the other hand, preparations should be made to face the challenges brought by "machine translators". All second language teachers should consider three questions: First, is it still necessary to learnasecond language? We are required to rethink the significance of learning foreign language (second language), and that of learning Chinese as a second language. Second, is there any value in instrumental teaching? This question gives us insight into the fact that teaching Chinese as a second language just forthecommunicative purpose will be greatly impacted. Third, whatwouldthe second language teaching, especiallyteachingChineseasa second languagebe like in the future? Given that, we need to delve deep into the specific role played bymicro lectures,convergence media, teaching machines, online communities for language partners and other teaching forms.
At this Symposium, Associate Prof. Liu Xiaohai, Deputy Director of ACLR, and Prof. Zhang Baolin, Honorary Researcher of ACLR and Manager of the Innovative Construction on Chinese Interlanguage Corpus Project, respectively delivered speeches on Research on the Construction of Language Learning Resources for Teaching Chinese as a Second Language in the New Era and A Corpus-Based Survey on the Acquisition of Chinese Separable Words. Prof. Wang Jianqin, Prof. Zheng Yanqun, and Prof. Cao Caihong from BLCU and Gao Yufeng, who plans to participate in the construction of MOOC project launched by ACLR,were also present at the Symposium and made reports. BLCU’s delegation demonstrated its overall strength in the research field of international Chinese language education.
Deputy Director Liu Xiaohai was invited to moderate a parallel session, in which experts and scholars from different universities tookpart, including BLCU, Huaqiao University, Harvard University, and the Confucius Institute at the University of Basel.
The Symposium was co-organized by the Europe Association of Chinese Teaching (EACT) and the Confucius Institute at the University College Dublin. Participants shared their experiences, achievements, and problems on Chinese language teachingthrough their speeches and parallel sessions.
