News Report

Second Working Conference of CIMU was held successfully in Kisumu

by Jiang zhaofeng

On March 3rd ,2018, the Confucius Institute at Moi University (CIMU), Kenya, held the second Dean's working Conference in Kisumu. This meeting discussed the integration of Chinese curriculum into the credit course system of Moi University and the opening of Chinese major in Moi University. The meeting was chaired by Huang Peixi, Chinese director of CIMU.
 

Peter Simatei, Dean of School of Arts and Social Science at Moi University and Director of CIMU, delivered a welcoming speech, then Prof. Huang summarized the work of CIMU in 2017 and outlined its work plan for 2018.

After that, the attendants held a heated discussion on how to integrate the Chinese curriculum into the credit course system in each college. Prof. Peter Simatei first gave a brief introduction about the foreign language teaching condition in Moi University, he said that at the moment, the foreign language courses at Moi University were mainly offered by School of arts, so he proposed to include the Chinese language curriculum into the Foreign Language Department of School of Arts and thus offered the Chinese course together with other foreign languages to students with interest in learning foreign languages.

Prof. Justus Murunga Wamukoya, Dean of the School of Information Science, also said that there was a need for second language studies in a number of majors, including multimedia. Prof. Timothy K. Sulo, Dean of the School of Agriculture and Natural Resources, suggested that the introduction of Chinese classes into primary and secondary schools could help students to build a better language base. Peter Ndegeer, a professor from the School of Arts, suggested that CIMU should offer more courses on Chinese politics, history and culture. Prof. Peter Simatei said it was possible to include Chinese lessons into the credit program at Moi University, and he would work with prof. Huang on that.

When it comes to setting up a Chinese major in Moi University, Prof. Peter Simatei said it was a long-term job, requiring full preparation and the construction of a complete curriculum system. Prof. Huang said CIMU would keep working on it, and invite experts and scholars from China to help with it. After in-depth research and discussion, the attendants reached a consensus that a suitable Chinese teaching curriculum system could be established according to the existing curriculum system of foreign language majors in Moi University and also the characteristics of the Chinese curriculum itself, which was an important step for setting up Chinese major.

In addition, the attendants also held in-depth discussions on the current situation and various problems CIMU encountered, representatives of each college expressed their willingness to provide assistance to promote the further development of the Chinese language curriculum in Moi University.