Bulletin Number Three 1985

Symposium on Teaching and Testing of Spoken Modem Standard Chinese A large-scale Symposium on Teaching and Testing of Spoken Modem Standard Chinese was held for the first time in Hong Kong from 1st to 5th May, 1985 at the University of Hong Kong (1st to 3rd May) and The Chinese University of Hong Kong (4th to 5th). Jointly organized by the New Asia--Yale- in-China Chinese Language Centre of this University, the Language Centre of the University of Hong Kong, the Arts Faculty of Baptist College, the Language Departments o f the Hong Kong Polytechnic and the City Polytechnic, and the Hong Kong Chinese Language Society, the Symposium aims at promoting the exchange of experience among Chinese linguists, scholars and language teachers, raising the efficiency of Guoyu/Putonghua teaching, and exploring the theoretical and practical problems in the testing of Guoyu. More than two hundred scholars and language teachers participated in this Symposium. Apart from local participants, more than fifty scholars came from Mainland China, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand and U.S.A., among whom were Professor L ü Shuxiang, Professor Chen Zhangtai, Professor Zhang Zhigong, Professor Zhang Shoukang, Professor Yang Shiquan, Professor Qin Si, Professor Y.C. Li, Dr. Cornelius Kubler, and Dr. Raymond Hsu, etc. The first day of the Symposium was held at the University of Hong Kong. In his opening address, Dr. Rayson Huang, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hong Kong, praised the organizers of the Symposium for their efforts and paid tribute to Professor L ü Shuxiang, the seventy-year old Honorary Director of the Language Research Centre of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, for his outstanding academic achievement. Professor R. Lord, Dean of the Arts Faculty of Baptist College, was the first speaker, who spoke on 'Putonghua in the 21st Century'. He was followed by language teachers from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Mainland China, Singapore and Malaysia who reported on the teaching of Putonghua/ Guoyu/Huayu in their respective regions. In the afternoon, participants were divided into two groups. In 2 NEWS