Wang Yifen (Right), Teaching Director of Irvine Chinese School, and Wu Nianyang(Left) were auditing a training class given by Professor Ma Yanhua.

According to The China Press, Professor Ma Yanhua from Beijing Normal University and Associate Professor Wu Nianyang from Shanghai Normal University appointed by China Overseas Communication Association visited many Chinese teaching schools in South California, USA recently. On 24 Oct 2009, they came to Irvine Chinese School. They observed the Chinese teaching activities and also gave training lessons to the Chinese teachers there.

Ma Yanhua said that they had visited Confucius Institutes in Los Angles and Portland, Cerritos Chinese School and Irvine Chinese School in the last few days. On 24 Oct they came to Irvine Chinese School, one of the 50 model Chinese schools in America. "It is my fifth time to visit America. The observation in the recent years has given me an impression that more and more people here are showing interest in learning Chinese. The number of students in Irvine Chinese School exceeds 1000. Not only students studied Chinese with great passion, even many teachers wanted to attend our training class after driving for more than one hour. It touches me deeply."

As to the American students'problems of small vocabulary, the incapability of writing and reading, Professor Ma thought the main reason was the weak quality of the teaching staff. Some teachers neither studied Chinese as their major, nor had any professional training before. They assumed the studying capacity of American children based on their personal experience when learning Chinese. They take for granted that the knowledge they could understand when they were children is also understandable for American children.

"In fact, Chinese kids write what they can speak, while American kids more want to speak the Chinese words they have seen. Therefore, Chinese teachers here have to change the traditional teaching mode. They should teach students differently according to their individual aptitude. "

As to how to improve the quality of the teaching staff in the U.S., Wu Nianyang believed the professionalism and stability of the team should be enhanced. A standard needed to be set up for insuring the quality. "To be able to speak Chinese doesn't mean to be able to teach Chinese. They are quite different. As a Chinese teacher, he or she should start teaching after receiving enough trained. The education department back in China has to establish certain guidelines to solve the problem."