In order to provide online in-service training for Mandarin teachers in Europe and Africa, helping them improve their professional skills, the Overseas Community Affairs Council held "2021 OCAC Distance Learning Program for Mandarin Teachers (for Europe and Africa)", at National Taiwan Normal University(NTNU) Extension School of Continuing Education from March 29th to April 19th. In total, 59 Mandarin teachers from different nationalities have participated in this program, including South Africa, Belgium, Luxembourg, Austria, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom.
This program focuses on three topics, namely, "Distance Learning Application," "E-learning Materials Demonstration," "Online Mandarin Teaching." In addition, the NTNU faculty team has customized a series of cross-cultural and interdisciplinary courses to suit the Mandarin teachers worldwide. The synchronous online learning has been beneficial to the online resource and information sharing as well as encourage the teaching demonstration and discussion between the participants. All the participants have expressed that they benefited greatly from this three-week program, and since the channel of Mandarin teaching exchange and communication have been strengthened, these Mandarin teachers have become more confident of Mandarin promotion in the future.
The closing ceremony was hosted by Yu-O Jung, the director-general of the Department of Education Affairs of OCAC. During the ceremony, Ms. Jung appreciated the participants dedicating to Mandarin education and it is expected that the Mandarin teachers will share the information learned in this program with their students or encourage them to pursue advanced Mandarin study in Taiwan.
In the post-epidemic era, OCAC is going to integrate the resource of universities to hold a variety of training programs online, such as "Online MA Program in Teaching Mandarin as a Foreign Language," also, the audio-visual materials will be uploaded to "www.HuayuWorld.org" of OCAC for the promotion of Mandarin education.
