ABSTRACT
The objectives of this study were to 1) investigate the awareness and understanding of students majoring in Chinese at UBRU and HUFL about the One Belt, One Road Initiative (BRI) proposed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in relation to their future career opportunities in ASEAN countries and other regions, and 2) explore the ways for developing Chinese teaching to suit 21st-century learning and skills for the two targeted groups of students. To collect data, questionnaires consisting of 268 items (140 in Thai and 128 in Vietnamese) were distributed to the two groups. The findings revealed significant differences between the students at UBRU, Thailand and HUFL, Vietnam in terms of four areas of the first objective pertaining to the students’ awareness and understanding of the BRI in relation to their future career opportunities. Conversely, the findings of the second objective pertaining to exploring the ways for developing Chinese teaching to suit 21st-century learning and skills for the students at both universities shared common expectations of the two groups in the aspects of (1) fulfilling other updated and important contents such as economic and financial literacy when teaching in the classroom, apart from teaching only Chinese linguistics and language per se, (2) integrating teaching techniques by reducing passive learning and increasing active learning in the classroom, and (3) giving more outside-class assignments to emphasize on self-learning from media and Internet literacy.
