Bulletin Spring 1979

New Asia — Yale- in -China Chinese Language Centre by Mr. Liu Ming Director, Chinese Language Centre The NewAsia—Yale-in-China Chinese Language Centre is one o f the leading international institutions for teaching Mandarin and Cantonese to non-native speakers o f Chinese. Founded in 1963 under the jo in t auspices o f New Asia College and Yale-in-China Asso ciation (which has been renamed The Yale-China Association), the Centre became a part o f this Univer­ sity on 1st July, 1974. The Centre now operates both in Kowloon, and at the University campus in Shatin. The Fong Shu Chuen Building, to be completed by the end o f 1979, w ill be the permanent home o f the New Asia-Yale-in-China Chinese Language Centre. Every year over two hundred students come from different parts o f the world to study at the Language Centre. These students range from absolute beginners to trained sinologists who wish to brush up their spokenChinese or learn a second dialect. Courses are offered at all levels to cater for students with different needs and abilities. Indeed, the Centre makes every effort to accommodate flexibly the particular demands o f each student. The Language Centre also regularly teaches Mandarin to hundreds o f local Cantonese-speaking residents, not to mention the students o f the University. Faculty The faculty o f the Language Centre prepare a significant portion o f their own teaching materials and audio-visual aids for the students. Tapes may be borrowed from the Centre's tape library or students may, for a small fee, have personal copies made o f non-copyrighted materials. The Centre has twenty-one full-time language instructors and sixteen part-time instructors. The lan­ guage instructors are all fu lly qualified and experienced teachers w ith varied backgrounds, interests and areas o f specialization, including: Chinese Language and Literature, Foreign Languages, History, Philosophy, Economics, Commerce, Business Management, Lin guistics, Psychology, Law, A rt, Sociology, Engineering, M ilitary Science, Language Teaching Teaching a language is a very complex task. Instructors must have complete mastery o f at least one Romanization system for transcribing written Chinese and teaching spoken Chinese to beginners, and be well trained in the methodology o f language teaching and basic linguistics. They must also have some knowledge in phonology so as to teach beginners to distinguish between different tones and different sounds and pronounce correctly. One o f the unique features o f the Chinese language is that it is a tonal language. If one cannot master the precise tones, one may say "Wo m à i ma. (I sell my mother)” ，when one wants to say "Wo m â i ma. (I buy a horse)". When 16