Abstract:

Recent literature on 2nd language teaching has contained much information on and support for the contextualized approach, which indicates that opportunities must be provided for students to practice using language in a range of contexts likely to be encountered in the target culture.

As China's economy booms and communications with the world have seen rapid growth, there has also been a sharp increase in the world’s demand for Chinese teaching. However, though a great deal of Chinese learners are learning domestically, most learners are learning overseas, in the non-native environment.

The purpose of the chapter is to explore how to provide students with much more practical opportunities to learn Chinese. In order to accomplish this, the college-level Chinese textbook “New Practical Chinese Reader” is instrumental as it has fit into classroom instruction with a communicative approach at CIRU (Confucius Institute of Rhodes University) and suggests improvements on helping students to apply knowledge to coping with authentic language-use situations in a non-native environment. Some case studies of contextualized Chinese teaching at the CIRU will also be analyed.