Chapter One INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background
Nowadays, China’s economic development and exchanges with the world have witnessed great growth step by step, and there has been a rapid increase in the world’s demands for Chinese language learning. Given that the UK, France, Germany and Spain successfully promoted their national languages around the world, China has also begun the exploration of establishing Confucius Institutes as non-profit public institutions which are run on the principle of promoting Chinese language and culture in foreign countries since when it was set up in 2004. According to the Confucius Institute Annual Development Report (2015), there had been 500 Confucius Institutes and 1,000 Confucius Classrooms in 134 countries and regions, and a total of 16,100 in-service directors, Chinese language teachers and volunteers were sent by Confucius Institute Headquarters or Hanban in 144 countries by the end of 2015. Due to the large population and rapid increase of the group as the Chinese sojourners in Confucius Institutes abroad, a variety of intercultural issues like culture shock, intercultural communication, and indigenous classroom management, etc. emerged among this special group overseas. One of the biggest challenges is the fact that they are not familiar with the new culture of the host country in comparison with that of their origin, thus it is difficult for them to adapt to the work and life there. On the other hand, Hanban has complied and developed the Standard for International Chinese Language Teachers (hereinafter referred to as the Standard) aiming at the target of training a mass of qualified and professional Chinese language teachers to satisfy the ever-growing demand for Chinese language learning in other countries and regions. The Standard overall consists of five modules. They are: (i)Linguistic knowledge and skills; (ii)Cultures and communication; (iii)Theory of the second language acquisition and study strategy; (iv)Teaching methodology; and (v)Overall quality (Standards for Teachers of Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages, 2007). However, the gap between the expected professional quality of international Chinese language teachers and its existence in life is also noticeable，which becomes the original motivation and interest to conduct the study. Although the field
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1.2 Purpose and Significance
The study aims to access the status quo of the Chinese sojourners’ cross-cultural adaptation (CCA) in the Confucius Institutes, and investigates their teaching adaptation and cross-cultural strategies they adopt as well as the demographic information of the subjects ranging from Chinese directors, Chinese language teachers or volunteers to graduates or interns from the universiti
