New Criteria for L2 Chinese Teachers’ Pedagogical Competence
Development
姬 建 国
JI Jianguo
美国 纽约城市大学 曼哈顿学院
The
Abstract:
The
training of L2 Chinese teachers for American classrooms needs to transcend the
traditional approach that focuses disproportionately on the linguistic
description of the language form.
To better facilitate learners’ acquisition of Chinese as a foreign language,
it becomes all the more necessary to place a new emphasis on nurturing a strong
transcultural consciousness about L2 pedagogy, and on developing a need-based,
transculturally-oriented, and process-targeted capacity of instruction in the
teacher. Such new criteria is
derived from the nature of the L2 Chinese education, whose uniqueness is
particularly manifested in the academic characteristics of this field of
learning, in the expectations for teachers’ professional knowledge structure
and pedagogical competence to cope with learners’ needs for
transculturally-based cognitive-linguistic development, and in the crucial
importance of transculturally-oriented pedagogical consciousness for L2 Chinese
teacher training. It also sets peculiar demands for theory building and teacher
preparation specifics. L2 Chinese teacher
training operations will need to undergo corresponding adjustments and
modifications in order for the quality of L2 Chinese teacher education to meet
the transcultural needs of the learners.