A study on the curriculum of Chinese culture in the field of Humanities, Sri Lanka

Abstract

Gradually, a vast number of Sri Lankan students are becoming motivated to learn the Chinese language because of its necessity in contemporary Sri Lankan society. Foreign language education is basically not derived from humanities education as it focuses on cultural norms, values and aspects related to a foreign nation. This research study aims to study and make cultural teaching and learning quality in Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language (TCFL) in the university education system as it is a platform of transmitting values of the Chinese language including Chinese arts, philosophy, literature and civilization for better understanding of China and Chinese people. Therefore, this study focuses on the current situation of the curriculum of Chinese culture in the field of humanities including learning and teaching methods practiced and the Chinese culture text materials usage in TCFL classroom. This paper is designed to be a quantitative research study and the research sample consists of 100 students who belonged to the 2015/2016 academic year and 7 Chinese language teachers including Chinese, local and volunteer teachers. The research methods used were the questionnaire method, the interview method and the experiment method through which mainly the research study focused on the significant characteristics of the curriculum, teaching methods and strategies used by Chinese teachers. The findings demonstrated that the teaching methods and strategies used in the Chinese culture curriculum are not flexible to attain the culture teaching enrichment goals in the field of humanities. Some of the issues faced are, lack of sufficient time for the teaching process, teaching materials not being sufficient for effective teaching, the culture classroom arrangement lacking communication between local Chinese teachers and volunteer Chinese teachers, the Chinese culture teaching material not being suitable to enhance the humanities education in the University. Thus, in conclusion teachers should regulate new teaching methods engaged with the new developments of foreign language education including the communicative method, the multimedia teaching method and the activity based method. Further, culture teaching should be student centered in order to allow students to easily acquire cultural values in contemporary Chinese society and scholars must also compile the Sri Lankan culture materials with the objective of exposing the system of Chinese cultural values in order to standardize and revalue the humanities education in the University system of Sri Lanka