Special Chinese tutoring gives fresh perspective

Bilingual Chinese-language teachers are high in demand and short in supply across the United States, and it is no exception for the Department of World Languages of Miami Dade College, Wolfson Campus, in Florida.

To overcome the problem, Jim Yu, department chair and co-chair of the Asian Pacific Heritage Committee at the college, developed a one-on-one Chinese tutoring program by connecting Chinese-language students with tutors from China.

The result is that both US students and Chinese tutors have enriched their understanding of each other's culture, with tutors gaining experience in teaching and students benefiting in learning.

Miami Dade College, with its Confucius Institute shut down in 2019, can now offer only very limited Chinese courses. A dearth of Chinese teachers has always been an issue when there were more than 100 Confucius Institutes across the US, Yu said. With most of them shut down, the shortage becomes more serious.

To make up for the shortage and keep students engaged, Yu contacted Jiangsu Normal University in Jiangsu province for help, and recruited six students from its Department of Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages to provide one-on-one tutoring to 12 students.

Kevin Obando, a high school junior who took the Chinese course for the first time through his school's partnership with the college, said he got to understand the fundamentals such as pinyin, how Chinese characters are formed, and the different tones in one short semester.

"I can recognize and pronounce some words now."

Obando said the tutoring program was very helpful not only in learning Chinese, but also in knowing more about Chinese culture.

"My tutor is Yunfei," Obando said. "After the lesson she would also teach me about Chinese culture. I learned that there are different cuisines in different regions in China."

The tutor showed him a video of Peking Opera, and Obando was fascinated by it. "I like how it began, how the music tells the story, and I like the final combination of the ending. It's a very artistic form that I like very much."

Obando also learned about Spring Festival and what people drink and eat on various special occasions.

Obando's tutor, Gao Yunfei, said the tutoring experience not only gave her a taste of the joys of teaching Chinese to non-native speakers, but it also provided her insight into a different culture.

Cultural differences

"During the exchange I discovered something interesting about the cultural differences between China and the US. For example, when talking about Jackie Chan movies, most US people talk about Jackie Chan movies from Hollywood, but we mostly talk about Jackie Chan movies from the Emperor Entertainment Group (in Hong Kong)."

Yu said he is encouraged by the success of the tutoring program and will continue it next semester.

"The tutoring program not only can help engage American students more, but also can help take some pressure off Chinese teachers here."

This type of program can be adopted by US universities in the future to promote Chinese learning in the US, he said.

mayzhou@chinadailyusa.com