TAG-Confucius Newsletter | Issue 50 - July 2020 TAG-Confucius Institute: IN THIS ISSUE: The Institute was established in September TAG-Confucius Institute is holding a new 2008 to introduce the Chinese language and course to teach the basics of the Chinese culture, as well as achieving a greater mutual language for beginners: understanding between the Arab and Chinese TAG-Confucius Institute Received the Anti- cultures. This unique initiative is based on the Pandemic Drugs from the Center for Language Education and Cooperation cooperation agreement between TAG-Org and Confucius Institute in China. The Institute has TAG-Confucius Institute Successfully Launches Online Chinese Teaching During been named after the great intellectual, mentor COVID-19 Pandemic and philosopher, Confucius, whose ideas had TAG-Confucius Institute Holds Chinese Hard- influenced China and other regions around the Tipped Calligraphy Competition world for over 2,000 years. Ten Famous Bridges of China For inquiries please contact us Tel: +962 - 6 5100600 | Fax: +962 - 6 5100606 website: www.tagconfucius.com | Email: [email protected] TAG-Confucius Newsletter Issue 50 - July 2020 TAG-Confucius Institute is the first institute accredited by the Chinese Government to teach Chinese language in Jordan. TAG-Confucius Institute is holding a new course to teach the basics of the Chinese language for beginners: A. Threshold Level for Adults: starting 09/08/2020 Schedule: Sunday - Tuesday from 6:00 – 8:00 pm B. Threshold Level for Kids : starting 08\08\2020 Schedule: Sunday - Tuesday from 6:00 – 8:00 pm *All Chinese language teachers are from China specialized in teaching Chinese language for foreigners and accredited by the Confucius Institute in China. TAG-Confucius Institute Received the Anti-Pandemic Drugs from the Center for Language Education and Cooperation On July 7, TAG-Confucius Institute (TAG-CI) received Lianhua Qingwen Capsules, the anti-pandemic drugs, from the Center for Language Education and Cooperation (CLEC), which is the second batch of anti-pandemic items TAG-CI received after the medical face masks from Chinese embassy in Jordan. Since the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic in Jordan in March, CLEC has been concerned about the health, safety and pandemic prevention and control of the teachers at TAG-CI. For this purpose, CLEC specially sent Lianhua Qingwen Capsules to TAG-CI staff. Although it took two and a half months on the way and two days for customs clearance, when the staff got the medicines, they felt very warm in their hearts at the moment, expressing gratitude to the leaders and teachers of CLEC for their care and love from thousands of miles away. With the great help of all parties, all the teachers and students of TAG-CI are safe and sound, and Chinese teaching is carried out in an orderly manner. The teachers will continue to stick to their posts, strengthen pandemic prevention and self-protection, and continue to do a good job in international Chinese education. 1 TAG-Confucius Newsletter Issue 50 - July 2020 TAG-Confucius Institute Successfully Launches Online Chinese Teaching During COVID-19 Pandemic During the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic, some Confucius Institutes have launched online Chinese teaching and some plan to start online teaching. In order to meet the demand for online teaching, Confucius Institute Headquarters (now called Center for Language Education and Cooperation, CLEC) plans to further improve curriculum resources and provide support for CIs. For this purpose, CLEC selected TAG-Confucius Institute (TAG-CI) and a few others that have successfully launched online teaching to learn about the following aspects of online teaching. 1. What’s the platform for online teaching? 2. What’s the way of online teaching? Is it live streaming or will the course be recorded in advance and uploaded to the internet for students to choose freely? 3. What courses are mainly taught online currently? 4. Does online teaching have attendance management for students? Are there examinations and assessments? 5. Does the Confucius Institute or the student need to pay for the use of the platform or software? 6. What are the problems and difficulties in online teaching? 7. Other problems and suggestions for online teaching. After we fed back the online teaching status of TAG-CI to CLEC, TAG-CI was highly praised and recognized by Director and Project Officer of the Division of Asian and African CIs, who expressed that they would refer to and learn from TAG-CI’s practice. Due to COVID-19 pandemic, Jordanian government announced that universities, secondary schools, primary schools, kindergartens and training institutions had to suspend offline teaching from March 15 and all employees should work from home. TAG-CI observed the government’s pandemic prevention measures and launched online teaching to ensure that the students can continue to learn Chinese without suspension. As early as December last year, during the International Chinese Language Education Conference, TAG-CI established friendly cooperative relationship with the Great Wall Chinese Center and started online and offline mixed teaching using the Great Wall Chinese Smart Cloud Platform. The teacher-in-charge of the Great Wall Chinese 2 TAG-Confucius Newsletter Issue 50 - July 2020 Center held online training especially for TAG-CI teachers and introduced how to conduct live streaming and how to use the teaching resources on the platform. For online teaching, TAG-CI is fully prepared from technical training and curriculum Design, laying a solid foundation for seamless connection and smooth progress from offline teaching to online teaching. During online teaching period, the teaching plan and curriculum arrangement of TAG- CI are the same as those of offline teaching, and the management mode is also the same, with students’ attendance records, assessment and examinations. Before class, the teacher upload the teaching PPT，audio, video and other relevant contents to the platform for sharing with the students. At the same time, the classroom activities suitable for online teaching are designed. In class, the teacher uses the uploaded materials and online “whiteboard” writing function, pictures, gestures, awarding trophies and other forms to fully mobilize students’ interest in learning Chinese. Students can use the “whiteboard” function to write answers to questions or to practice. Meanwhile, the teacher can interact with the students to know about their mastery of content in this class and their feedback, etc. In addition to using the platform for live streaming, the teachers also communicate with students through e-mail, WeChat, WhatsApp and other ways to complete personalized teaching operations such as teaching homework assignment, assessment, examination, document sharing and announcement publishing. Students can log in to the platform anytime and anywhere to participate in various learning activities. At the same time, the platform will record the students’ learning track, which is helpful for the teacher to monitor and analyze students’ learning situation. The teacher and the students can also use ZOOM or Tencent Meeting software to conduct online discussion or consultation. During the pandemic, how to use the online platform to complete language teaching and provide students with a lively, rich and interesting Chinese learning environment has always been a concern of TAG-CI. H.E. Talal Abu-Ghazaleh，Chairman of TAG.Global， has been advocating distance education and giving strong support to online teaching of TAG-CI. Shenyang Normal University, the partner university of TAG-CI, also attaches importance to online teaching of TAG-CI. TAG-CI will continue to make efforts to actively promote its development in the direction of informatization, diversification and digitization, and further promote language and cultural exchange and cooperation. 3 TAG-Confucius Newsletter Issue 50 - July 2020 TAG-Confucius Institute Holds Chinese Hard-Tipped Calligraphy Competition During COVID-19 pandemic, the Chinese teaching events at TAG-Confucius Institute (TAG-CI) are still conducted online. In order to inspire students’ enthusiasm for learning Chinese, enrich daily teaching content, standardize Chinese characters writing, and display the charm of Chinese calligraphy, TAG-CI held an online Chinese hard-tipped calligraphy competition on July 19. The competition was divided into adult group and children group, and dozens of students participated in the competition. After more than two weeks of preparation, under the careful guidance of the teachers of TAG- CI, with the active cooperation and careful preparation of the students, the students submitted fascinating calligraphy works to TAG-CI with positive and delightful content, including Chinese classical poetry, modern poetry, prose, children’s rhymes, idiom stories, philosophical essays, classic articles in the textbooks, etc. Their writing is standard and pleasing to the eye; the paper looks neat and the layout is reasonable. After evaluation and scoring by the teachers, the final result of the calligraphy competition is that Rand Albakri won the first place of adult group; Emran Albaba and Yazan Mussa won the second and third place of adult group respectively. Abdallah Aldirini won the first place of children group; Reema Khashashneh and Esra Albaba won the second and third place of children’s group respectively. Chinese characters are an indispensable part of Chinese teaching. This calligraphy competition, from the selection of writing