October 23, 2011, Confucius Classroom Munich ushered in the second training workshop, which was one of the "2011Overseas Chinese Teachers' Training " series. Professor LI Min from Beijing Foreign Studies University did a wonderful lecture on "Cultural Input and Overseas Chinese Language Teaching ".

Professor LI Min first described the importance of cultural input in the processing of Chinese as foreign language teaching which was expanded in the characteristics of cross-cultural communication. Then she combined the teaching practice to illustrate how to input the culture properly in the non-target language environment, especially in the Western cultural environment. She divided the texts into two categories: one with "obvious cultural items" and the other with "non-obvious cultural items". She took her actual Chinese Lesson, taught at the University of Southern Denmark, as an example to explain how to input the Chinese culture felicitously and naturally by using the two types of the text. She emphasized that the teachers should find a balance between language teaching and cultural input, so that they could meet the students’ needs of language skills, but also could seize the opportunity to input the Chinese culture in the classroom.

As with the pertinent and actual lesson show, the seminar provided a great inspiration to the local Chinese language teachers. During the seminar, the local teachers cited the problems encountered in the actual Chinese language teaching in Germany, such as combination of cultural input and distinguishing characters, and how to correct the learners’ nonobjective understanding of Chinese culture. They initiated the discussion with Professor LI. With the relaxed and lively discussion, the local teachers got a better understanding of it in Professor LI's detailed analysis and answers. Many teachers said that this lecture had great inspirational and practical significance to their future teaching. The local Chinese teachers from Nuremberg and Ulm, also thought that they had a worthwhile trip to this seminar.

At the end of the seminar, Ms. FANG Jie, the Chinese Director of Confucius Classroom Munich, concluded: “As a teacher of Chinese as foreign language, we should have the sensitivity of culture teaching, and be good at exploring the cultural factors in language teaching. Teaching Chinese as foreign language is inseparable from cultural input. Without the cultural input, the Chinese language teaching will lose itself significance. ” Her views were endorsed by all the participants of this seminar.

Through this seminar, the teachers strengthened their awareness of the importance of culture input in the Chinese as foreign language teaching. Many teachers said that in the future they would actively explore the appropriate culture input methods in their actual Chinese teaching.