Reading Chinese: engaging new audiences

Emerging from our previous AHRC-funded research on new Chinese writing, this project, "Reading Chinese: engaging new audiences", primarily responds to an urgent need arising from recent guidelines from the Department for Education on language teaching. These guidelines specify a new requirement for a significant amount of literature to be taught within the modern language curriculum, from the early years of secondary school. The Chinese curriculum is modelled on that for European languages. When these guidelines were discussed with UK-based teachers of Chinese, during a presentation we made about our previous research project at the annual Chinese Teachers Conference in the Institute of Education, many expressed anxiety about finding resources which were both age-appropriate and covered the necessary topics. There was a strong consensus that to be practicable with a challenging language like Chinese works needed also to be available in English translation. In a follow-up survey, many teachers expressed a lack of awareness of literature which was written in simple modern language, as these works are not generally covered either in school curricula in China (where the focus is often on traditional, classical works) or, for the UK-trained teachers, in many University programmes. This also comes at a time of significant Government investment in Chinese at school level, with a £10 million Mandarin Excellence Programme having been launched in 2016.
The second identified need has emerged from our discussions in the research network with publishers, translators, and authors of new Chinese writing. There is broad agreement across our network that the lack of non-academic reviews of new Chinese writing in English translation is a key obstacle in promoting new works. Publishers are wary of taking on new projects without these, particularly if the topics do not fit the standard 'acceptable' tropes such as memoirs of the Cultural Revolution.
The third need (established via surveys amongst the membership of the Association for Speakers of Chinese as a Second Language) is for CPD training for graduates and other professionals who have learned Chinese to a high level, but need to source appropriate and accessible reading material to maintain their language skills, despite busy working lives -- contemporary literary texts can provide an obvious, and enjoyable, solution, but they need to be selected appropriately.

To address these needs, we will develop a new user-led sustainable web resource on Chinese literature, with teaching materials and book reviews, and linked to a fully searchable, free-to-view full-text database of new Chinese writing in English translation. We will also develop a training programme for teachers to address the practicalities of teaching literature, which will involve an annual seminar at the IOE's PGCE training programme (Mandarin pathway) and a residential workshop for selected teachers, leading to the establishment of a network of ambassadors for teaching literature in the curriculum. Finally, in partnership with leading publishers, we will set up a volunteer book review network, modelled on the BBC Radio 2 bookclub, where reviewers are sent a free copy, 'blind' in return for providing a review for our site.

The teaching materials and training programme will be developed in partnership with the Confucius Institute based at the Institute of Education, which hosts a network of over 800 teachers of Chinese in the UK, and which leads the development and mainstreaming of Mandarin Chinese in secondary and primary schools across England The database will be developed in partnership with Paper Republic, a Beijing-based collective of translators and authors at the forefront of new Chinese writing. The book review network will be facilitated by titles provided free of charge by our partners Penguin Books and Balestier Press (the leading independent publisher of Chinese fiction in translation).

The first beneficiary of this project will be schools in the UK, or following UK curricula. The new web resource will be developed in conjunction with school teachers and will provide bespoke teaching materials designed to meet the new DfE guidelines. School teachers will be provided with an innovative, fully searchable, free-to-view database of texts with keywords relating to topics in the curriculum. These keywords will be chosen in consultation with teachers, and the database design will allow entries to be amended after feedback throughout the project, and from the mid-project review. Alongside the web resource, the training sessions for Mandarin pathway PGCE students (which will be repeated annually at the IOE after the end of the project) and the creation of the network of Reading Chinese ambassadors, will together ensure that support for the teaching of literature within the Chinese curriculum is fully embedded and sustainable.

The second beneficiary of this project will be those involved in translation and publishing of Chinese fiction in English. Representatives of these fields who joined our AHRC-funded research network have told us repeatedly in discussions of the problems in promoting translated fiction in the West, and indeed of finding publishers willing to take on these books, and have identified a key issue as being the lack of an online presence and especially of 'non-academic' book reviews of new titles. The book reviewers network will address this need directly and will be provide a fully sustainable source of new reviews after the end of the funding period.

The third beneficiary will be professionals with Chinese interests and/or graduates of Chinese who have identified a desire to maintain their Chinese reading skills. The CPD residential weekend will allow delegates to engage with the latest in new Chinese writing, with author readings, Q&A and bookclub discussions in both Chinese and English, led by leading translators. All who attend will be required to submit at least one book review for the website. Delegates will be invited to apply for a place initially via the 800+ strong international membership of the Association for Speakers of Chinese as a Second Language (of which the PI is co-chair) and also the ASCSL's partner organisations, including the British Association for Chinese Studies, and the British Council's Generation UK China network. After the event feedback surveys will be used to evaluate the impact of this event.