About

Origin

In a global market where the Chinese influence is constantly on the rise, there have been, not surprisingly, a craze for learning Mandarin across borders; many countries have listed Mandarin as a focus in foreign language education and there are numerous training institutes offering courses in teaching Mandarin as a second language. In Taiwan, institutes as such enroll local Taiwanese students, many of which choose to go abroad to become Mandarin teachers to foreigners. Differently put, we have been “exporting” teachers of Mandarin as L2.

On the other way round, however, we wonder if soliciting internationals to be trained as teachers of L2 Chinese would be an equally valid idea, given the fact that we are now in this reciprocal global context? The foundation of such an argument lies in that these trained internationals would have a firmer grasp of their own cultural backgrounds after they go back to their home countries and hence would be keener in bridging up the cultural differences.

Hence in response to the policy of the Ministry of Education: Higher Education Export by Enrolling International Students, under which the two main themes are to enhance friendlier campus and to market studying in Taiwan, Tunghai University establishes Master Program of Teaching Mandarin as a Second Language.