Recently, the MOE launched an online demonstration training program designed to help teachers in poverty stricken areas to improve their standard spoken and written Chinese language ability, as part of its innovative initiatives to promote poverty relief through education. The training program involves 50 national language promotion bases providing remote online training to teachers in 52 poverty counties that they were paired up with, aiming to promote standardized Mandarin in teaching activities and improve teachers’ ability to use standard spoken and written Chinese language in impoverished areas and ethnic minority areas.

On April 18 and 19, over 1,100 teachers and graduate students at the 50 based participated as language tutors in the pilot training session which was streamed alive. It is expected that they will give online tutoring to 5,200 ethnic minority teachers and rural teachers from 52 poverty counties, when the program is fully rolled out from May to August. The training will be implemented through an online learning platform equipped with functions such as releases of learning materials, monitoring of training process, collection and analyses of learning data, and more. The mobile-based learning model will allow great flexibility to fit with the needs of both tutors and learners. To improve teachers-in-training’s accuracy, fluency and confidence in their teaching activities using the standard Chinese language, the training will also integrate a large variety of demonstrative methods targeting at assisting ethnic minority learners and learners who are more used to speaking dialects to switch to using standardized Mandarin.