Hua, did you see the news? Sri Lanka held a “Chinese Teachers’ Cultural Training Camp” to help recharge more than a hundred local Chinese teachers.

Teachers go to training camp too? It sounds a bit like the teaching research activities we attend. Was it about learning how to teach, or about learning culture?

It covered both. Besides classroom methods, there were taiji experiences, themed lectures, and workshops on things like calligraphy. The goal was very clear: to help teachers add cultural content into language classes.

That’s really important. If you only teach grammar and vocabulary, students quickly get bored. When I teach English, I also find that once I talk about festivals, movies, or food, students immediately have something to say.

Exactly. Language is like a key, and culture is the room behind the door. Sri Lanka’s education authorities also said that learning Chinese can open up new academic, cultural, and economic opportunities.

I like that they mentioned “person-to-person communication.” Cooperation between countries sounds huge, but actually it starts with one class and one teacher.

And the outstanding participants even have a chance to go to China for two weeks of cultural training. Just think about it: if teachers have personally practiced calligraphy and taiji, then go back and teach, students will trust them more.

This makes me reflect: we always ask students to do “immersive learning,” but are teachers themselves immersed? Maybe in the next teaching workshop, I should add some cultural experiences too. Otherwise, it’s like teaching only the map without taking people on the trip.