China worries too few foreigners learning Chinese

[Harold Schiffman]

 Forwarded  From:  edling at lists.sis.utsa.edu


Reuters



China worries too few foreigners learning Chinese



There has been a big rise in the number of foreigners learning
Chinese, but still too few are studying the language, officials said
on Thursday, worried this may affect efforts to soften China's global
image.



China began setting up Confucius Institutes in 2004 to teach Chinese
and they are now in 81 countries, but efforts to expand them are being
hampered by too few teachers and poor teaching materials.



Full story:

http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSTRE52B1UW20090312





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 Harold F. Schiffman

Professor Emeritus of
 Dravidian Linguistics and Culture
Dept. of South Asia Studies
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305

Phone:  (215) 898-7475
Fax:  (215) 573-2138

Email:  haroldfs at gmail.com
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/

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