Abstract
Blended teaching has emerged as a trend in the digital learning
environments of the post-COVID-19 era. In recent years, discussions on
’principled eclecticism’ have arisen in the field of foreign language
education. Principled eclecticism advocates for teachers to integrate
various teaching methods, techniques, and strategies, tailoring them to
learners’ goals, needs, and situations to create diverse and flexible
foreign language classes. Learner-centered diversified teaching not only
aligns with the concept of hybrid teaching in the post-COVID-19 pandemic
era but also coincides with the ’teaching in accordance with aptitude’
(yīncáishījiào) advocated in Confucius’ thought. A literature review
revealed that ’principled eclecticism’ was proposed in 2000 and has been
discussed in the context of English teaching. This study employed
Boolean Logic to search for relevant Chinese and English terms in major
academic research databases (Taiwan’s online Airiti Library, ERICDATA,
National Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations in Taiwan, China
Academic Journals Full-text Databas (CJFD), China Masters’ Theses
Full-text Database (CMFD), China Dissertations Database, EBSCOhost,
ProQuest and ERIC- Education Resources Information Center), however,
very little discussion on the application of principled eclecticism in
the Chinese language teaching. A systematic literature review on the
core concepts of principled eclecticism in foreign language education
has been conducted in this study to fill the knowledge gap in Chinese
language teaching research and practice. Applying principled
eclecticism, this study has also developed a lesson plan, taking
’Wàngzǐchénglóng Wàngnǚchéngfèng’ (Hope children will have a bright
future) as an example, for Chinese language teaching, as well as a
checklist with 22 items for principled eclectic Chinese language
teaching that can be applied in future research and practice.