| Summary: | 碩士 === 中原大學 === 應用華語文研究所 === 100 === “Broadening Horizons Scheme” is a project that Mandarin teaching assistants were co-selected by the governors of Taiwan and the U.K. It aims to promote Chinese language and to encourage British students to know about Taiwan and its culture. Since Pilton Community College of the U.K. entered into the project in 2007, it opened a Mandarin curriculum for students. The Mandarin curriculum in 2010 was instructed five-Mandarin lesson every two weeks for each class, and the Mandarin teaching assistant was expected to design the lessons incorporated with language learning and culture knowledge. That’s why the curriculum was called as “Mandarin mini-courses.”
From October 2010 to July 2011, the researcher was working as a Mandarin teaching assistant for Pilton Community College and in charge of teaching five classes of eighth graders and three students of ninth graders the Mandarin mini-courses. Due to the uniqueness of such course, researcher planed to administrate an action research for finding out an appropriate overall design for Mandarin mini-courses. Data were collected through teaching journals and the classroom observation. Issues encountered in each lesson were solved through the cycle of action, data collection, verification and reflection. During the research period, the researcher answered the research questions step by steps by means of document analysis and understood the implementation effect of Mandarin mini-courses through questionnaire.
According to the study result, the overall design No. five is the final one. Elements affecting the overall design of Mandarin mini-courses are as follows: teacher’s teaching philosophy, class learning style, limit of learning time, and teacher’s pre-class preparation. As for class teaching, co-operative learning, interactive teaching, and teacher’s teaching behavior are beneficial to learners’ language learning. The result of questionnaire shows that the Mandarin mini-courses meet the learning needs as well as achieve the goal of “Broadening Horizons Scheme.” Nevertheless, there are still many topics of teaching design worth developing. Meanwhile, the course design shall be more interactive, interesting, and creative to stimulate learners’ interests to learn.
Lastly, based on the results of previous study, this study proposes suggestions to serve as a reference for relevant institutions or future participants of the scheme.
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