The first Chinese Language Teaching Conference was held in Confucius Institute at Middle East Technical University on November 26. More than 30 Chinese language teachers from different schools of Turkey attended the conference. Shanping Wang, director of Confucius Institute at Middle East Technical University, hosted the conference. All delegates were actively involved in sharing their teaching experience, talking about the current situations and the prospects of Chinese language teaching in Turkey.

Pengfei Chen (Erciyes University) said that the current Chinese language teaching and learning were based on "word" which originated in Western linguistics; in fact, Chinese language is based on single "character", so we should focus on the teaching of Chinese characters.

Yingchun Dong (Confucius Classroom, Jale School) said Chinese characters should be learnt at an early age. In the Confucius classroom, the five-year-old students began to learn Chinese characters. When they are in the first grade, most of them can write well.

Jun Liu (Erciyes University) thought teachers should consider the local conditions. Most of the students in Erciyes University chose Chinese language as their major not because they liked it, but because they had no better choice. So it was very important to stimulate students’ interest.

Nurzhanat Ametbek (Inci Koleji School) agreed that interest was the best teacher and she always designed a lot of interesting games for students to participate.

Eyup Saritas (Istanbul University) believed that it was the most important to improve the teaching of the local Chinese teachers. He said, “Local teachers should be sent to China for long-term training.” He hoped that they would have their own local Chinese teaching teams in Turkey in the future.

Gonca Unal (Ankara University) mentioned that Chinese was really difficult for Turkish students, because Chinese language has three systems: Chinese characters, Pinyin and the tone, but Turkish language, only one system. On the other hand, the culture of China and Turkey has many similarities, such as family relationships, education and food - they also have "dumplings." She believed that teachers of Chinese language should keep learning for better teaching.

Chunju Song (Okan University) thought teachers should create contexts for students, not just in the classroom, but out of classroom. She always encouraged students to speak Chinese on different occasions.

Safak Simsek said she taught both Turkish and Chinese language and attached much importance to practice.

Some delegates shared their teaching experience on numbers. Sedef (Ataturk High School) taught numbers from 1 to 10 by gestures. Qitao Chen (Bilkent University) taught through gestures and cultural contrast. Huaizhi Li (Confucius Institute at METU) preferred to tell the students the implied meaning of some numbers. When students quickly learnt numbers, Jun Liu (Erciyes University) would introduce the usage of numbers, such as telephone numbers, the year, the month, the day, and calculating – addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. College students were ready to learn about the related knowledge. Yake Wang (Confucius Institute at METU) demonstrated two digital games and suggested that teachers should make full use of multimedia resources in Chinese language teaching.

Finally the delegates explored the prospects of Chinese language teaching in Turkey, and agreed that the Turkish version of the Chinese language teaching materials would be convenient and good for their teaching, and they all expressed a sincere hope of cooperating with Confucius Institute at METU in the future for the sake of promoting Chinese teaching in Turkey.