94% of researchers rate our articles as excellent or good
Learn more about the work of our research integrity team to safeguard the quality of each article we publish.
Find out more
REVIEW article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Higher Education
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2025.1466508
This article is part of the Research Topic Foreign Language Teaching and Learning in Chinese Higher Education: Emerging Challenges View all 15 articles
The Current State of Italian Language and Culture Teaching in Higher Education in China
Provisionally accepted- Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, Wuhan, China
In the growing context of economic globalization, trade and exchanges between countries around the world are more and more frequent. This brings about an increasing demands of experts in foreign languages. It has been already 71 years since the University of International Business and Economics (UIBE) in Bejing launched the first Italian language programme in 1954. Currently, there are 24 universities and institutes across the country (including Hong Kong and Macao) offer the academic degree related to Italian language and culture. Furthermore, many other universities and higher education institutions provide Italian language courses. This paper briefly reviews the history of teaching Italian language and culture in China. The aim of this study is to provide a comprehensive overview regarding the current state of teaching Italian language and culture within Chinese higher education system. This paper also covers the relevant teachers’ educational background, their academic titles and the use of teaching material, etc. In particular, this study sheds some light on the state of teaching the aforementioned subjects in Chinese institutions (universities, institutes, vocational and technical institutes) that provide Italian language and culture as elective, compulsory or minor courses, and the teaching situation to graduate students, which was not thoroughly explored in previous studies. Furthermore, this paper shows the various types of course program, the number of students enrolled and some peculiar difficulties of providing these kinds of courses to Chinese learners.
Keywords: Italian language, teachers' academic titles, course curricula, Teachers' difficulties, higher education, Chinese vocational education
Received: 18 Jul 2024; Accepted: 10 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Gu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Shuangshuang Gu, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, Wuhan, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.