At Saginaw Valley State University, Michigan, a Taiwanese university student named Weng Tzu-­chieh faced a few dozen students ranging in age from teenagers to adults nearing retirement. It was the summer of 2013 and the students were intently focused on their lesson, trying to get a handle on the pronunciation of words that differed only in tone.

Reviewing vocabulary with the class, Weng showed a picture of a small dog and called on a young student to tell her what it was. The anxious student at first couldn’t recall the pronunciation of the word (gou), but then surprised her by blurting out “gao” (similar to the Taiwanese word for dog).

Weng, a third-year student in the Department of Teaching Chinese as a Second Language at Ming Chuan University, was spending a month in the US teaching Chinese as part of a Ministry of Education international internship program in Chinese language education.

Weng’s class consisted of complete beginners. “It was very much like teaching young children,” she says, explaining that classes were very short and that their primary objective was heightening students’ interest in the language. She used a variety of guessing and card games to achieve that end, and also enforced a “Chinese-only” rule when the games were in progress. The games were simple enough for everyone to play, and the students all seemed to have a good time in spite of the differences in their ages.

“It was enjoyable for me, too, and very satisfying,” recalls Weng, who had previously taught at a summer Mandarin camp in Thailand. Though she used to have little interest in teaching Mandarin, her two trips abroad have ignited her passion for education and she now plans to teach Mandarin internationally once she graduates.

Adapted to local tastes and circumstances, the teaching materials produced by NTNU’s Mandarin Training Center provide a valuable resource for overseas Mandarin instructors.

An established “brand”

Chinese is a notoriously difficult language to learn, and making it fun for students is something Mandarin teachers working overseas often struggle with.

Taiwan currently works with a number of Chinese Schools and language centers in major US cities, some of which even offer free classes as a means to attract more students.

Taiwan’s first foray into international Mandarin education dates all the way back to the 1956 establishment of its first overseas Mandarin educational institution—the Taipei Language Institute—in New Jersey. In its first few years of existence, TLI focused on cultivating the Mandarin skills of foreign missionaries. It did so to such outstanding effect that it began working with the US State Department in 1959, helping train US diplomats headed for postings in Chinese-speaking locations. Over the years, TLI has grown to be one of the most respected Chinese language training institutions in the non-Chinese-speaking world.

But when Taiwan’s international situation changed in 1972, our official overseas language training efforts began to experience difficulties. The Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission (now the Overseas Community Affairs Council, OCAC) therefore asked National Taiwan Normal University, National Cheng­chi University, and the Mandarin Daily News to establish the World Chinese Language Association, an academic body that seeks to further Mandarin education overseas. Since 1977, the association has trained more than 10,000 Chinese language teachers who now work in more than 2,000 schools for overseas Chinese around the world.

About half the students at these Chinese Schools are full time. The remainder attend weekend and holiday classes designed to meet their needs. The local overseas Chinese who comprise the majority of the teachers are the heart of Taiwan’s overseas Mandarin educational efforts; their familiarity with the local culture makes it far easier for them to communicate effectively with students.

More than language proficiency

In the early years, Chinese teacher training emphasized core language skills, primarily knowledge of character formation, etymologies, pronunciations, and meanings, as well as a firm grasp of phonology and the classics. In more recent years, teachers have also been required to study pedagogy, gain a broader understanding of Chinese culture, and acquire IT skills. According to Chiang Hsi-mei, director of the Department of Teaching Chinese as a Second Language at Ming Chuan University, the old emphasis on Chinese language skills left teachers unprepared to face contemporary challenges. She argues that teachers nowadays need a variety of skills, including an understanding of educational psychology and pedagogical methodologies. In other words, they not only need knowledge, but also the ability to teach.

Since language educators are also on the front lines of cultural transmission, their training now includes subjects such as “Chinese culture and society” and “popular literature” that are intended to provide them with a solid cultural foundation that they can utilize in their teaching. For example, while yu certainly means “jade,” the word also embodies an array of culturally specific metaphoric associations to things such as a gentle and “lustrous” nature and nobility of character. You need an appreciation of these other levels of meaning in order to grasp why jade is so beloved in Chinese societies.

A new field

With the 2006 addition of Mandarin to the US’s roster of Advanced Placement exams (used to offer students university credit for advanced high-school coursework), a large number of American high schools and universities began offering Mandarin courses, increasing both the demand for Mandarin teachers and their salaries. University-level Mandarin instructors in the US now earn roughly US$3,000 per month, a figure that is proving very tempting to young Taiwanese.

Singapore has also been recruiting teachers in Taiwan, offering NT$54,000 per month in salary, as well as free meals and a plane ticket.

Schools and private institutions in Taiwan train more than 1,000 Mandarin instructors every year, many of whom succumb to the attraction of the high salaries and social liberality of the US and Europe. Others are drawn to the cultural charms of Japan and Korea.

Lin Chin-hui has been teaching Mandarin in Europe for 13 years, first at Leiden University in the Netherlands in 2001 and now in the East Asian studies department at the University of Göttingen in Germany.

“There has been an obvious increase in the number of people studying Mandarin over the last dozen-odd years,” says Lin. “The number of schools offering it has grown as well.” She says that her own department grew from roughly 30 students in 2001 to 150 in 2007, and mentions that a colleague in Italy has taught classes with as many as 100 students. “Mandarin is hot!”

When Lin first arrived in the Netherlands, she found herself in competition for the Chinese teaching position with several linguistics and Sinology PhDs. Her degree in Chinese language education from National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) made her unique among the interviewees and was the reason Leiden ultimately hired her.

At Göttingen Lin not only teaches, but also handles the hiring of new instructors. “Taiwan needs to send over more teachers,” she says, explaining that there are still too few Mandarin instructors.

Adapting methodologies to local circumstances can also be challenging. Educators seeking to bridge the gap between languages have to develop pedagogical techniques suited to their students.

After more than a decade in the field, Lin believes a student’s mother tongue and experience learning other languages affect their acquisition of proper Chinese pronunciation. Students whose mother tongues have complex phonologies or who have learned several foreign languages have an easier time grasping Chinese pronunciation.

For example, Dutch voiced and unvoiced consonants are pronounced differently than their Mandarin counterparts, so that Dutch students new to Mandarin often confuse the pronunciations of Mandarin t/d and k/g to entertaining effect. Lin believes that having at least a rudimentary grasp of your students’ mother tongues is enormously helpful when teaching pronunciation.

A path less taken

While the global Chinese language learning market is very large, so too are the regional difference within it. Chen Jenn-yeu, dean of NTNU’s Department of Chinese as a Second Language, says that young teachers are flocking to Europe and the US. Far fewer are interested in taking positions in Southeast Asia because the salaries are so much lower.

On the other hand, retired educators who still have a passion for teaching but have fewer financial pressures are very willing to teach Chinese in Southeast Asia. They view the region as inexpensive, laidback, and close to home, making it a perfect place to continue contributing after retirement.

Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia are near at hand and have close economic ties to Taiwan, especially now that laborers from these countries have become an important part of Taiwanese society. Taiwanese employers naturally prefer to hire workers who understand Mandarin. But so do many Southeast Asian businesses, especially those operating in the tourism sector or that have business partners in mainland China and Taiwan. The fact that workers at such companies find Mandarin skills very useful in the workplace is creating business opportunities in language education.

A market based on student demand

Students’ motivations for learning Mandarin can be pragmatic or cultural. Chen says that many study the language to communicate with mainland Chinese businesses and therefore prefer to learn simplified characters.

In an educational market, satisfying student demands is paramount. “We don’t teach what we want to teach, but what students want to learn,” says Chen. He suggests that educators hoping to establish themselves in the global Mandarin market need to remain open minded.

In today’s market, instructors capable of teaching both traditional and simplified characters are preferable to those who can teach only one or the other. The younger generation of teachers are therefore being trained in both writing systems, as well as being familiarized with the ­Hanyu Pin­yin Romanization system used in mainland China.

Helping develop the market

“Looking at the global Mandarin education market as a battlefield, Taiwan’s problem isn’t that it lacks soldiers, but that it has too few frontline officers,” says Chen: Taiwan needs managers with marketing skills, who can develop the business overseas. To help cultivate industry professionals with leadership skills and vision, NTNU’s Department of Chinese as a Second Language is now planning to add management, finance, and marketing classes to its curriculum.

Taiwan does have some advantages, including an outstanding education tradition, a lively pedagogical style, and greater freedom to develop curricula.

Meanwhile, for all that the mainland’s Confucius Institutes appear to be on a roll, they also have important critics. For example, in June 2014 the American Association of University Professors issued a statement arguing: “Confucius Institutes… are allowed to ignore academic freedom. Their academic activities are under the supervision of Hanban [a Chinese state agency].... North American universities permit Confucius Institutes to advance a state agenda in the recruitment and control of academic staff, in the choice of curriculum, and in the restriction of debate....” The AAUP called for universities to cease cooperating with the institutes until the latter’s teachers enjoy academic freedom and the universities gain control over their curriculum.

In the global battle for Mandarin market share, the fact that Taiwan enjoys the same democratic values and freedoms as the West could ultimately help to turn the tide in our favor.