As an Asian-born establishment concerned with facilitating knowledge exchange and research collaboration partnerships in the area of the teaching and learning of Chinese, the CACLER has collaborated with 10 academic units in China, Korea, Taiwan and Japan to co-host the 7th International Conference on Han Characters Education and Research (第七屆〝漢字與漢字教育〞國際研討會) at Kaohsiung on 5-8 January 2017. 

The Conference provides a platform bringing together scholars, researchers and practitioners from different countries to discuss and share their ideas, perspectives, experiences and research insights into how variations of Han characters feature and are taught in a number of Asian languages, such as Korean, Japanese, Mainland Chinese, Singaporean, Taiwanese and Vietnamese. Building upon the success of the previous six conferences, the cross-border partnership has been increased from two institutions in 2011 to ten at present, including Kaohsiung Normal University; Taitung University; Wenzao Ursuline University of Languages; Beijing Normal University; Han Character Education Research Center, Korea; The Korea association for Han-Character and Classical Written Language Education; Institute of Chinese characters & Korean literature in classical Chinese, Korea University; Society for Korean Classical Chinese Education; Tokyo Gakugei University; and the CACLER.

The Conference has attracted 180 education researchers and frontline teachers from Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, Vietnam, China, USA, Macau and Hong Kong, and around 100 presentations have been conducted. Renowned scholars from Poland, Vietnam, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China and Hong Kong were invited to deliver plenary speeches embraced the Conference themes.

Twenty colleagues and research students from CACLER and our Faculty also took part in the paper presentation sessions. They include Dr. Doris YK Law, Prof. SK Tse, Dr. Joseph WI Lam, Dr. Elizabeth KY Loh, Dr. Xiao Zhang et al. 

For more details, please visit our conference website: http://icher2017.cacler.hku.hk/ The next conference will be held in late January 2018 in Japan.

(1st from left) Dr. Chen-Cheng Chun, Director of the Graduate Institute of Teaching Chinese as a Second Language, National Kaohsiung Normal University; Dr. Joseph WI Lam, Director of CACLER; Prof. Xiaowen Zhou, School of Chinese Language and Literature, Beijing Normal University; Associate Director, Research Center for Folk, Classics, Chinese Characters of BNU; Prof. Kim, Woojung, Professor, Dankook University, Korea; Prof. Xiang, Lipin, Director, Graduate Institute of Teaching Chinese as a Second Language, Wenzao Ursuline University of Languages, Taiwan; Dr. Heo Chul, Lecturer, Sungkyunkwan University

Conference Plenary speakers:

(1st from top left) Prof. Ovid J. L. Tzeng, Taiwan Academia Sinica & National Chiao Tung University; Prof. Xiaowen Zhou, Beijing Normal University; Prof. Matsuoka Eiji, Tokyo Gakugei University, Japan; Prof. Woojung Kim, Professor, Dankook University, Korea;

(1st from bottom left) Dr. Phuoc Loc Nguyen, Hochiminh City University of Pedagogy, Vietnam; Dr. Doris YK Law, Faculty of Education, HKU; Prof. Norbert Kordek, Institute of Linguistics, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland

Officiating guests at Conference Opening: (1st from right) Prof. Ovid J. L. Tzeng, Distinguished Research Fellow and Academician, Academia Sinica, Taiwan; Prof. Lien-Shang Wu, President of National Kaohsiung Normal University; Prof. Matsuoka Eiji, Tokyo Gakugei University, Japan; Dr. Chen-Cheng Chun, Director of the Graduate Institute of Teaching Chinese as a Second Language, National Kaohsiung Normal University; Prof. SK Tse, HKU; Prof. Norbert Kordek, Institute of Linguistics, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland

Conference Website: http://icher2017.cacler.hku.hk/

Conference Rundown (Download)