The Confucius Institute of the University of Castilla-La Mancha (UCLM) will teach in october language courses and Chinese culture aimed at children aged between 8 and 17 and adults. With a total teaching load of 80 and 104 hours, respectively, the activity will take place at the university headquarters of Albacete, Ciudad Real, Toledo, and Talavera de la Reina by native teachers until May 2018.
The activity of the Confucius Institute of the UCLM starts in the academic year 2017-2018 with different courses of language and Chinese culture aimed at children aged between 8 and 17 years and adults. The first institute, a pioneer in the region, has a teaching load of 80 hours, at a rate of three hours a week between october 5th, and january 19th (first semester) and between january 29th, and may 4th (second semester).
This course will be taught only at initiation level including two age groups (8 to 12 years and 13 to 17 years), with classes that will be held on friday afternoons and on saturday mornings for the first group, and monday and wednesday afternoon for the second.
The Chinese language and culture course for adults takes up the lessons taught previously on the campus by the Centro de Lenguas of the UCLM and will be taught in four levels. A level test will be carried out at the beginning of the course in order to determine in which level the student is located. The student can also prove their knowledge by presenting the official HSK certificate, or the accreditation from the Escuela Oficial de Idiomas (Official School of Languages). The academic calendar coincides with the course aimed at children and the dates will be monday and wednesday in the afternoon for levels I and III, and Tuesday and Thursday, also in the afternoon, for levels II and IV. In all the courses, the teaching lessons will be in charge of native teachers with profiles of Spanish philology, profiles of Chinese teaching, as well as professionals teaching Chinese as a foreign language.
The Confucius Institute of the UCLM, managed by professors Ángela Celis and Xu Caixia, is the first institute in the region of Castilla-La Mancha, and the seventh in Spain. This initiative is promoted by The Vice-chancellor´s office for Internationalization and Lifelong Learning with the help of the Nanchang University. From September, coinciding with the new course, the Institute will expand its activity with various cultural dissemination initiatives and the call for HSK, HSKK, YCT and BCT exams for the official accreditation of the knowledge of the Chinese language.
Office of Communications, UCLM. Toledo, 2017