On December 11, the closing ceremony of "Promoting Exchange and Showing Professional Demeanor"—the First Show of Portuguese Chinese Language Teachers' Teaching Skills was held online. As one of the series of activities for International Chinese Language Education Week 2021 (ICLEW 2021), this activity was jointly organized by the Embassy of the People's Republic of China in the Portuguese Republic, the International Society for Chinese Language Teaching and the Confucius Institute of the University of Minho, Portugal. Zhao Bentang, Chinese Ambassador to Portugal; Zhong Yinghua, President of the International Society for Chinese Language Teaching; and Rui Vieira Castro, President of the University of Minho, Portugal, attended the closing ceremony and delivered speeches online. Seventeen teachers from five Confucius Institutes and two Chinese language schools in Portugal participated in the online showing. The International Society for Chinese Language Teaching issued an electronic commemorative certificate to the expert judges and Chinese language teachers who participated.
Ambassador Zhao Bentang said that China would always be a builder of world peace, a contributor to global development, and a defender of international order. China and Portugal have a comprehensive strategic partnership. Although their political systems are different, their pursuit of peace and development is the same. Presented with major historical opportunities, China and Portugal have a deeper understanding of the importance of strengthening language education, deepening international understanding, and jointly building a community with a shared future for mankind. China and Portugal are more deeply cognizant of cultivating the next generation; global vision, world sentiment, cross-language and cross-cultural ability are the common responsibilities of language educators all over the world. He pointed out that the Portuguese government and education industry have attached great importance to Chinese language teaching for a long time. Since 2006, five universities including University of Minho, University of Lisboa, University of Aveiro, University of Coimbra and University of Porto have successively established Confucius Institutes and Confucius Classrooms. In 2015, a pilot project for Chinese language teaching was established in the Portuguese public education system, and a total of 13 public middle schools offered Chinese language courses. In addition, overseas Chinese have also established several Chinese language schools and formed a Chinese language teaching system for different levels and covering all age groups in Portugal. The purpose of this show of teaching skills is to build an exchange platform for Chinese language teachers in Portugal, to help them learn from each other, improve teaching skills and levels, and lay a solid foundation for the cultivation of talents toward cooperation in politics, economics, trade, education, science, etc., in order to make positive contributions to promoting and deepening friendly relations between China and Portugal.
President Zhong Yinghua emphasized that the development of China-Portugal relations have always maintained positive momentum. In recent years, the economic cooperation between the two countries has continued to deepen, and educational exchange and cooperation have become increasingly close. It is meaningful for Chinese and Portuguese colleagues to research and learn from each other for the beloved work of Chinese language education, and to research and explore how to help the local people in Portugal learn and use the Chinese language better and faster.
President Castro said that the Confucius Institute of the University of Minho, Portugal, has long been and continues to be committed to promoting Chinese language in Portugal, and has always been welcomed by local people. This Chinese language teachers training activity was significant to promoting teaching exchange.
With the support of the National Social Science Fund of China, the International Society for Chinese Language Teaching invited members from the United States, Germany, France, South Korea, and China to establish an international team of experts who each provided academic guidance for the show's activities and gave their respective comments on the award-winning teaching videos. Zhu Yongping, the President of the Chinese Language Teachers Association, USA and Associate Professor of the University of Notre Dame gave the concluding speech on behalf of the expert group. President Zhu said that these teaching videos show teachers' full participation in the activity; regardless of their setting—whether at university, or in elementary and middle schools, or in preschools, or online—or the quality of their teaching conditions—whether extravagant or difficult—or the number of their students, they were all industriously teaching Chinese language with enthusiasm. We were judging, we were scoring, and we were also learning. The teachers have learned many excellent teaching skills from participating teachers. They listened carefully to the guidance and benefited a lot. They all stated that they would continue to explore and expand new teaching ideas and methods, strive to teach Chinese language well, tell Chinese stories well, and contribute to the promotion of Chinese language education in Portugal. (Information Sources：Center for Language Education and Cooperation)
