Submitted by cob on
On July 27, the last class of the Summer Mandarin Course for the Administrative Staff of the University of the Bahamas was completed at Room 11, CHMI, which marks the successfully conclusion of this six-week long summer course. This summer course which was exclusively held for the administrative staff of the university started from June 20. Due to the limit of enrollment, the course recruited 30 trainees in two classes in spite of enthusiastic application. The trainees include Dr. Pandora Johnson, Vice President of the University, Dr. Hepbrun, Director of “Government Public Policy Institute”, Dr. Bethel, Director of “on-line Education Center”, Mr. Miller, Chief of the Campus Security Office and other senior staff. Prof. Fan Yong, the new Chinese Co-Director of the Confucius Institute at the University took charge of the teaching duty for the course, which was delivered twice a week with two hours each time. Although the trainees have a very tight schedule with their administrative duty and they took the course during their lunch break, nevertheless, they were very devoted to learning Chinese language. To illustrate, Dr. Pandora-Johnson, the Vice President attended each class on time in spite of her busy administrative duty. Dr. Hepbrun, Director of “Government Public Policy Institute”, who once missed a class due to his duty, made an appointment with Prof Fan for a make-up tutoring. The teaching result of the course was fairly satisfactory with a warm classroom atmosphere. In the midst of the course, trainees also participated in two Chinese culture experience sessions—“Chinese Tea Culture Experience” and “Experiment with Writing Chinese Characters”. Upon the conclusion of the course, many trainees pointed out that they gained abundantly from this learning experience, which increased their enthusiasm in Chinese language and culture and that they would like take available opportunities in future to upgrade their Mandarin proficiency.
In recent years, with China playing an increasingly important role in World economy and with the increasing trade and cultural link between China and the Bahamas, the Chinese language is becoming one of the most popular foreign languages for the Bahamians to learn, while the various Chinese courses delivered by the Confucius Institute at the University of the Bahamas constitute the only official channel for the local people to learn Chinese language. The successful completion of this Summer course is a perfect reflection of this trend.