The Certificate in Teaching of Chinese as a Second Language aims to provide participants with theoretical and practical knowledge of the various aspects of second language acquisition and equip them with relevant teaching and assessment strategies to enable them to teach Chinese Language more effectively and efficiently in the bilingual environment of Singapore.

The certificate programme consists five courses.This is an introductory module to the programme and maps out for Chinese as a Second Language teachers the essential research knowledge of factors relevant to inter-language interaction and thereby equips them with relevant second language learning and acquisition understanding so as to guide them in teaching Chinese language more effectively and efficiently in the bilingual environment of Singapore.

The course will cover the following topics:
1. Society Factors affecting Chinese as a Second Language learning：Singapore as a multi-linguistic-cultural society. The changing trends of Mother Tongue Languages as main home languages.
2. Home Factors affecting Chinese as a Second Language learning：Parental education and language attitude, the preference for main home language, and home resources for language learning.
3. Student Factors affecting Chinese as a Second Language learning：Types of motivation,critical period of second language learning,input and output hypotheses,differences between language acquisition and learning.