The project aims to develop competence-based instructional modules and new forms of instructional materials for the subject of Mandarin Chinese. We initiated the project to demonstrate how the competence-based instruction can be implemented in disciplinary pedagogy in elementary as well as middle schools. For the new curriculum standards of 12-Year Basic Education Curricula, the core of competence-based Chinese education is to nurture an active learner, who is able and willing to communicate with other people via multiple communication channels regarding to the diversity of social and cultural contexts. Moreover, an active learner is also willing to use language as a tool to demonstrate critical thinking, reflecting, and decision making in order to achieve his or her goals, to develop his or her s knowledge and potential and to participate in society.
To achieve the goal, the project proposed a different approach of language pedagogy in Mandarin Chinese. To starter, we visited previous studies on “literacies” and “competences” in first language education, which were mostly from the official documents of OECD, PISA or PIRLS. We also discovered the discourses of “literacies” in Taiwan. In addition, we visited the language learning theory of M. A. K. Holliday, who suggested that a comprehensive language pedagogy should be composed by three dimensions of language learning: to learn language, to learn through language, and to learn about language. Our findings directed us to a broader view of the term “literacies” than portrayed by traditional language-based approaches.
As a result, the project suggested that the competence-based pedagogy in Mandarin Chinese should consider the processes of language learning, which includes the ways that language learners engaging with texts to process inner and outside cognitive activities; the contexts that the language learners to use texts; the medium of the texts; and the right attitude to use texts regarding to variety of social and cultural contexts. We believed that a good language learner of Mandarin Chinese can use Mandarin well to help him or her to solve pragmatic problems of his or her working, civic, and private lives. Moreover, they also perform high-level academic skills and abundant knowledge in learning Mandarin Chinese as a subject.
The competence-based instructional modules are characterized as a combination of cognitive-based as well as literature-based instruction. The competence-based instruction modules were basically strategy-centered, which helped the students to acquire essential abilities to learn by themselves. More than that, the instructional modules tried to equip students with the essential knowledge of literature criticism, such as the knowledge the genres and styles of texts, which helped the students to do aesthetic reading in the support of knowledge of Chinese literature.
To date, most part of the instructional plans, the articles, and the resources for our instructional modules are completed. First, for elementary school teachers, nine well-developed literacy-based instructional modules are provided as samples of competence-based language pedagogy. Moreover, there was a nation-wide experiment on these instructional modules to evaluate their effect on promoting students’ reading comprehension abilities. For the junior high school teachers, six instructional modules and video-tapes, including three for modern Chinese language and three for ancient Chinese language are provided. Last, for the high-school teachers, we’ve finished the drafts of three instructional modules. Those instructional modules systematically arrange instructional materials based on the reading levels of the texts. Also, the instructional modules demonstrate how to teach learning strategies such as summarizing, questioning, and making connections step by step to the students.