Indian university teams up with Taiwan to start a degree program in Mandarin Chinese

印度大學與台灣合作開辦中文普通話學位課程

NEW DELHI (Taiwan News) - Amity University in India will start a three-year degree program in Mandarin Chinese from next year, said Dr Balvinder Shukla, Vice Chancellor of the University.

He was addressing about 100 participants of the second two-day "India-Taiwan Bilateral Forum on the Mandarin Chinese Teaching Materials for Indian Learners" at the school.

It was sponsored by the Ministry of Education, Taiwan, and was organized by Amity University, Noida, Programe Office for Taiwan Education Center in India, National Tsing Hua University and National Kaohsiung Normal University.

The opening ceremony held at Pragati Maidan was attended by Ambassador Tien Chung-kwang (田中光), Representative of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Centre in India, Wang Wei-Chung, Professor and Senior Adviser for Global Affairs, Office of the President, National Tsing Hua University, and Walter Yeh, President and CEO, Taiwan External Trade Development Council.

Tien, in his address explained the difference between two types of characters by giving example of "麵" and "面". He said that traditional Mandarin Chinese can really keep the meaning of the word.

The Forum discussed subjects like the practical or theoretical experience on writing or editing principles of Mandarin Chinese Teaching materials, class design, and how to apply digital media in the class.

It also discussed the demand, motivation, interest and ability of Indian students in learning Mandarin Chinese.

The other subjects for discussion included hypothesizing possible barriers on the application and marketing in India that both parties might encounter on the Mandarin Chinese Teaching materials.

The second day of the Forum discussed about the culture, tones, motivation of learning foreign language, app teaching and publishing. Other professors teaching Spanish, German and French also came to exchange their opinions from their

Somya Nayak, Assistant Professor, Department of Asian Studies, School of Arab and Asian Languages, the English and Foreign Languages, University of Hyderabad, also explained about the tones.

In the end of the session 5, Mr. Chi Cheng Mao, General Manager, New Sharing Publishing Company, and Mr. Inderbir Singh Kochar, Head of Institution, Amity School of Languages, talked about the cooperation of Hindi and Mandarin teaching Materials since elementary school to adult learning.

Shreeparna Roy, Assistant Professor, department of East Asian Studies, University of Delhi, said that India is not lack of teachers, but lack of proper teaching materials.

The Ministry of Education of the Republic of China, since the founding of the Chinese Education Centre in India, has been teaching Chinese to Indians to promote the image of Taiwan.