On 15 May, the “Symposium on International Chinese Teaching in a New Era: Innovation and Quality symposium was successfully held online, which was co-organized by the Confucius Institute at Oxford Brookes University (CIOBU), Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press (FLTRP),and Macmillan Education, in partnership with the International Chinese Language Education journal and supported by the International Society for Chinese Language Teaching. Nearly 1,500 experts, scholars and teachers from more than 20 countries including China, the United Kingdom, the United States, Malaysia, and France registered for the symposium, and about half attended the live online session.
During the opening ceremony of the symposium, Mr. Jie Liu, Executive Vice President of FLTRP and Executive Editor-in-Chief of International Chinese Language Education journal, Ms. Emma Bourne, Managing Director of Curriculum and Higher Education from Macmillan Education, and Professor Angus Phillips, Director of CIOBU and Director of the Oxford International Centre for Publishing delivered speeches on behalf of the organizers. They expressed their appreciation for the partnership in organizing this symposium and their willingness to collaborate more in the future to support language teaching and learning, including Chinese and English. The opening ceremony was presided over by Ms. Hui Hou, Co-Director of CIOBU.
Following on from this, two keynote speeches were made and two forums were held. In the keynote speech session, Professor Qiufang Wen from the Beijing Foreign Studies University, and Ms. Katharine Carruthers, Director of IOE Confucius Institute at University College London made speeches respectively, one entitled "Production-Oriented Approach (POA) and International Chinese Teaching" and the other "Maximizing Motivation for Mandarin: Language and Intercultural Communication in the Digital Age". This session was chaired by Professor Yang Zhao from Peking University who is also Editor-in-Chief of the International Chinese Language Education journal.
Two forums were themed on "Innovation and Practice of Teaching Methodology", and "Curriculum Design and Teaching Quality Improvement", with 8 professors and lecturers from China, the UK, and the US speaking about the two topics which were accompanied by hot discussions in the chat box.
In addition to the symposium, the organizers also held a series of workshops on related topics, with five experts from the UK and the US leading the workshops.
