Data-informed Language Pedagogy: Adaptive Curriculum and Instruction
Keynote Speaker: Jennifer Li-Chia Liu 劉力嘉
Harvard University
Various pedagogies such as task-based language teaching (TBLT) or content-based instruction (CBI) have been proposed as answers to the question: how do we teach language most effectively? However, these approaches each emphasize a fixed set of instructional principles, rather than highlighting the importance of research and its accompanying innovation or renovation. Given advances in technology and increasing access to large amounts of information-rich data, Chinese educators today should adopt data-informed language pedagogy to make their curriculum and instruction more learner-centered and adaptive.
A data-informed approach to language pedagogy promotes evidence-based innovations, encourages a scientific inquiry of the target language and learning, and increases the adaptiveness of instruction. This talk will discuss how data-informed pedagogy can be realized and illustrate the use of learner perception data (e.g., rating of grammar difficulty) to improve language curriculum over time, specifically in the area of leveling, sequencing, presentation, and explication of grammar points. In addition, it will show how different technologies can be utilized to identify study habits, student questions or interests, common mistakes, and areas of difficulty, so that agile adjustment can be made to meet the needs of students.
Where is Culture?: Intercultural Communicative Skill Development and Teaching Chinese as a Second Language
Closing Remark: Li Yu 虞莉
Williams College
In this post-Communicative Approach era, intercultural communicative skills have been receiving increasing attention in the field of Teaching Chinese as a Second Language. Michael Byram, the scholar who proposed the concept of intercultural communicative competence (ICC), defines it as “a person’s ability to relate to and communicate with people who speak a different language and live in a different cultural context.” Intercultural communication must take into consideration the social context of linguistic codes and the non-verbal dimension of communication. Language learners need to be nurtured into an “ethnographer” or “applied linguist” of the target culture. They must possess an open mind, “the curiosity and courage of an ethnographer,” and ultimately “the engagement and responsibility of the citizen.” How should Chinese language teachers go about helping language learners become “ethnographers” and “sojourners” of Chinese culture? How do we turn language learners into responsible and engaging “global citizens” who can build and maintain relationships across cultures? What elements of Chinese culture are teachable, learnable, and assessable? Is there a pedagogical framework that we can use to help language learners acquire ICC with a step-by-step sequence? How can we build a language program that systematically and coherently helps learners develop ICC while acquiring advanced proficiency in Chinese? In this talk, I will give an overview and discuss the status quo of cultural instruction and intercultural communicative skill development in the field of Teaching Chinese as a Second Language in the United States.
Versatility with Technology: Flexible Lesson Designs for In-person, Online, and Hybrid Settings
Workshop leader: Amber Navarre 黃馨怡
Boston University
In addition to causing death, illness, economic loss, and emotional turmoil, the COVID-19 virus threatened the continuity of education to an unprecedented extent and forced governments, educators, learners, and parents to seek technology-assisted solutions for continued learning. Many educational institutions switched to emergency remote learning and the shift remained up to two years in some areas. Although the design and execution of emergency remote learning are different from deliberate online learning (Hodges et al., 2020; Gacs, Goertler & Spasova, 2020), invaluable lessons have been learned and new pedagogies have emerged to inspire future educational practice, including curriculum design in lasting online or hybrid course formats and incorporation of technology in face-to-face instruction. One goal of such practice is to ensure flexibility of lesson designs that prepare teachers and learners for future unexpected situations (Online Learning Consortium, 2020).
During the pandemic, instructors’ attitude towards the shift has also changed largely, from the initial “disruptive (Iglesias-Pradas et al. 2021) and “disastrous” (Dhawan 2020)” mindset to being able to recognize the opportunities and learning benefits technology provides (Nworie, 2020; Zhang, 2020). The first-hand experience has also developed higher acceptance of using technological tools to enhance their teaching, even after the schools reopened and classes resumed to “normal” (i.e., face-to-face meetings or formalized long-term online course offerings) (Samuels, 2020; Dumont et al., 2021; Rapanta, 2021).
Language instructors, among other educators, have recognized the need to prepare themselves to teach in any combination of face-to-face, online, and hybrid settings (Singh et al., 2022; Feldman, 2021). However, one of the major persisting concerns remains to be the lack of knowledge and skills for the design of technology-enhanced instruction (Munday, 2021; Abu Talib, Bettayeb & Omer, 2021; Dumont et al., 2021). This current workshop aims to address this concern by presenting best practices and versatile designs incorporating a variety of research-supported technological tools, methods, and curricular designs that maximize the learning benefits in each (combination of) format. It provides the opportunity for participating instructors to reflect on their own beliefs, explore technology-enhanced solutions based on their own teaching contexts and needs, and develop their competence and confidence to incorporate instructional technology in curriculum design.
The impact of multimodal learning materials on Chinese characters self-learning
Hsiujen Cheng 鄭琇仁
National Kaohsiung Normal University
Learning Chinese characters has been the most challenging task for Chinese learners, especially for those with Non-sinosphere background. The author proposed that based on segment principle and multimodality theories, providing portions of learning messages such as Chinese radicals, characters, and words, in user-pace segments as well as in multimodal forms, learners would learn better. Therefore, a study conducted to see when applying a collection of learning units displayed in multimodal forms for learners in a regular Chinese course, whether the learners gain the knowledge of Chinese characters, what factors may affect their learning, and what kinds of learning materials are preferred.
A quasi-experimental study with several Chinese programs in the United States was administered in 2022 to find out the answers of the questions stated above. Students from 3 different higher education intuitions were voluntarily participated. The subjects were Chinese learners with limited knowledge of Chinese characters. The materials in the forms of Poker Cards presenting Chinese radicals with additional learning information presented in multimodal forms. One is supported with augmented technology and another is supported with paper-based booklet. The findings and conclusions will be discussed in this study.
Types of Grammatical Ambiguity in Chinese and their Application in L2 Reading Pedagogy
Wang, Chuchen王楚臻
International Chinese Language Program (ICLP)
National Taiwan University
Some argue the typology of Mandarin Chinese causes reading difficulties for L2 learners due to two main factors. Firstly, Chinese word segmentation is very challenging for L2 learners. This is because Mandarin is composed of isolated logograms. Moreover, the mixture of monosyllabic and polysyllabic morphemes and the lack of distinct word boundaries increases the difficulty and anxiety experienced by learners. Secondly, Chinese is a parataxical parts-of -speech language for which the semantics and syntactical structure do not necessarily correspond.
Due to the aforementioned reasons, Chinese L2 learners have trouble processing sentences. In particular, Chinese grammatical ambiguity is a common obstacle that stands in the way of reading comprehension.
This paper analyzes the following three types of Chinese grammatical ambiguity using contemporary theories of grammatical analysis: two linear constituents（the second one must be a modifier-head construction ）partially overlapping ambiguity, semantic relations ambiguity, and common ambiguity patterns in Chinese. Based on the analysis that follows, the following reading strategy is proposed in this paper: to design reading materials with grammatically ambiguous sentences for segmenting, rephrasing, and parsing a sentence. The reading speed and comprehension of L2 learners will be improved through enhanced familiarity with grammatically ambiguous sentences and an awareness of Chinese segmentation and semantic relations.
Keywords: ambiguous sentence, Chinese L2 reading instruction, word segmentation, grammatical analysis of Chinese
Teaching Literary Chinese at American Liberal Arts Colleges: Challenges and Experiments
Qiaomei Tang 唐巧美
Grinnell College
Literary Chinese (aka. Classical Chinese, Chin. 文言文Wenyan wen) was the principal language of written communication in China and other East Asian countries from ancient times to the beginning of the twentieth century. Even after its replacement by vernacular Chinese (Chin. Baihua wen) as the main form of written communication of Modern Chinese, the presence and influence of Literary Chinese in both the elite and popular discourses remain palpable. It is thus crucial to introduce Chinese language learners to the basic rules and structures of Literary Chinese, to equip them with the essential skills to read simple Literary Chinese expressions, and to make their Chinese education complete. As an important part of gaining a deeper understanding of Chinese civilization and acquiring a higher level of sophistication of the target language, teaching Literary Chinese is both a necessary and integral part of learning Chinese as a foreign language.
Even though Literary Chinese shares the same writing system with Modern Chinese, it is decidedly a different language and requires its own pedagogy. Literary Chinese is heavily context based, very flexible with the few rules and grammars it has, making studying this language a daunting task for many. Thus, how to teach it to American college students with only three or four years of training in Modern Chinese and make it interesting and meaningful to them has been a constant challenge to me as an instructor. In this presentation, I will explain the settings of my Literary Chinese classes which I have taught for six terms, including one at Swarthmore College. I will demonstrate how the variables such as the varying levels and learning needs of the students and the fluctuating enrollment numbers each term impact the way I teach the course. I will also discuss some of the experiments I have designed to meet the changing pedagogical needs. My hope is that through the presentation, I will bring a greater awareness of the importance of Literary Chinese in the overall education of Chinese as a foreign language, and to inspire and be inspired by workshop participants to better teach this course and to enhance Chinese pedagogy in general.
Teaching Business Chinese at the Advanced Level
Jing Hu 胡靜
University of Pennsylvania
This presentation will share the content-based instruction in a Business Chinese class at the advanced level including the selection of topics, methods of leading discussion and debate, design of interactive teaching and learning activities that are used to cultivate students’ language skills, cross-cultural knowledge, and professional competence.
The new Chinese Proficiency Grading Standards for International Chinese Language Education (2021) stipulates three levels and nine bands of learners’ Chinese proficiency, the learners’ five communication abilities (Listening, Speaking, Reading, Writing and Translation), guidelines for topics and tasks, as well as language quantitative criteria for each level. The presenter will show how she backward-designed various learning activities with reference to the principles described in the Standards, such as debate, pair and group discussion, reading and interactive writing exercise on Padlet, translation practices, and group projects. These activities also incorporate the Integrated Performance Assessment (IPA), and the five C’s of ACTFL for foreign language education.
How to balance content learning and language practice is always a challenging question at the advanced level. The presenter will address this issue and share her ideas and strategies. She will also share how she uses supplementary authentic materials (such as videos and newly published Chinese and English articles and news reports) to address the limitations of the textbook (which is somewhat outdated), while effectively conducting language practice activities.
The presentation will conclude with the results from the student survey and the presenter’s reflection on the strategies used to overcome the challenges and improve the outcomes of this kind and level of teaching.
Developing Intercultural Awareness and Competence Through Chinese Folktales
Xiaosu Sun 孫曉蘇
Nanjing Normal University
Folktales are the stories that are significantly valuable as they can help students study other cultures, make sense of other traditions, and share that understanding with others. This study focuses on a content-based bridge course on Chinese folktales designed and taught for advanced-level foreign students who study Chinese as a foreign language, and it attempts to demonstrate how teaching Chinese folktales can be a nuanced way to develop intercultural awareness and competence. This course traces the metamorphosis of the classic Chinese folktales in realm of popular culture. It considers the origins of the tales, analyzes their staying power and explores their global reach by looking at their reappearances in fiction, comic, opera, film and other forms of new media, as well as in overseas museums and art galleries, Chinatowns and commercial advertisements. It explores stories about demons and spirits, filial children and their evil parents, tricksters, cross-dressing heroines, as well as the issues about practices of marriage and family, law and order, conceptions of aging and death, cultural assumptions about gender roles. It asks the kinds of questions that result from juxtaposing the various forms and transformations that these tales have assumed over the time and across cultures: How are the stories retold over and over again in different types of genres and cultures? How does your cultural identity influence the way you interpret and relate to the Chinese version, and reflect on the version of your own culture? Do the stories perpetuate the stereotypes we know, or do they complicate the issues on morality and desire, gender and power etc. By showcasing the syllabus and class plan as well as what students learned, this study aims to demonstrate the significance of increasing the knowledge about beliefs, practices, and perspectives of other cultures through teaching folktales, and hopes to shed light on how to reconfigure the norms and expand the repertoire by exploring the striking differences and unexpected similarities in order to develop intercultural awareness, sensitivity and competence.
Capturing Cultural Implications: Using Authentic Materials to Teach Advanced CFL Learners
Shaohua Guo 郭紹華
Carleton College
Abstract: This paper explores pedagogical approaches that may help advanced CFL learners capture cultural implications when reading authentic materials. Using examples drawn from literature and film courses, the paper proposes to implement two strategies to stimulate the inquisitiveness of students and to inspire critical thinking: 1) emphasizing shared or background knowledge, and 2) exploring the sociocultural implications of authentic materials. These approaches are designed to involve students to engage in a close reading of authentic materials from a wide range of perspectives, including coherence, context, pragmatics, and culture. It argues that an incorporation of such approaches into CFL instruction can enhance the communicative competence of advanced learners. The final section of the paper discusses pedagogical implications of these approaches, in particular the ways in which learners may sharpen their awareness of how the target language is used in cultural contexts, meanwhile avoiding making overly generalized assumptions and reinforcing cultural stereotypes.
Grammatical and Identity Third Person Pronoun in Chinese: 他、她、TA
Mien-hwa Chiang 蔣冕華
University of Pennsylvania
In this presentation, the presenter begins by reviewing the syntactic functions of the third person pronoun “他” in the Chinese language. Following this brief review, the presenter explains the cognitive needs and history behind the creation of a female radical -female third person pronoun “她 in written Chinese narrative in the 1920s. Interestingly, 100 year later, a new gender-neutral third person pronoun “TA” (pinyin of Chinese third person pronoun) has become more accepted by the younger Chinese generation in social media. According to Zhao (2021), commercial media and young people are more aware of why to use gender friendly pinyin “TA” in certain contexts. Meanwhile, an intersexual (跨性别) third pronoun “X也” has been created with the English letter X and the Chinese character “也“, keeping the phonetic symbol. In the end, this preliminary research concludes that time and further development will reveal whether Chinese readers are aware of the meaning of “TA” or “X也” , as well as whether language policy makers would accept the two additional gender identity pronouns to the Chinese pronoun system.
“What character can best represent the meaning of this”: the effect of different stimuli on Chinese L2 learners’ character writing
Liang Yuan 梁源 Li Xinxin 李新新
The Education University of Hong Kong
Some teachers and researchers promote using the historical origin of how characters were created in ancient times to teach Chinese characters (e.g., Cui et al., 2018), especially pictogram characters. In addition, most textbooks provide English translations when helping students connect the semantic information to the graphic information of characters and words. Are these clues really helpful when Chinese second language (L2) learners write Chinese characters? The hypotheses of this study, therefore, include: 1) Chinese L2 learners perform better in Chinese character writing tests when ancient pictographic scripts are used as stimuli compared to tests using pictures or English words as stimuli because the former provides both the meaning of the character and some graphic information, while the latter only provides information on meaning; 2) Chinese L2 learners perform better in Chinese character writing test with English words as stimuli than that with pictures as stimuli because students are more familiar with English-Chinese translation practice. An experiment was designed to test these two hypotheses by investigating the character writing performance of 35 Chinese L2 learners in Hong Kong using three types of stimuli: ancient pictographic scripts, drawings and English words. By analysing their accuracy in writing the three groups of characters and the reaction time using the linear mixed-effect model to control the length of studying Chinese, their language contact profile on character writing, character recognition, self-concept (including their ability beliefs and enjoyment and interest), the frequency of use and the number of strokes of each character, this study found that the type of stimuli, their language contact profile on character writing, character recognition, their ability beliefs on character writing, and character frequency are strong predictors of the character writing accuracy. On the other hand, only students’ language contact profiles on character writing and their interest and enjoyment are strong predictors of their reaction time. The first hypothesis was proved correct with conditions. The accuracy of character writing with ancient pictographic scripts as stimuli was higher compared to using drawings and English words as stimuli, but only for characters with lower using frequencies. The second hypothesis, however, was tested incorrect. The accuracy of character writing was significantly lower when using English words as stimuli compared to using drawing as stimuli, especially for characters with higher frequencies and characters with more strokes. The findings of this study may further our understanding of the process of character activation when L2 students write Chinese characters, which may shed some light on character teaching pedagogy.
Key words: Chinese character writing, Chinese L2 learners, pictogram characters, Chinese character teaching pedagogy
Teaching Vocabulary and Grammar through Collocations
Jun Lang郎珺
Pomona College
Lexicon and grammar are treated as two distinct domains of linguistic knowledge in traditional frameworks of language. Teaching vocabulary and grammar in foreign language pedagogy bears the stamp of this deep-seated binary view. In recent years, the ascent of the usage-based constructionist approach to language and its embracement by empirically oriented linguists and second language acquisition researchers have generated considerable interest in integrating vocabulary and grammar in second language pedagogy. Using the data retrieved from BCC Corpus, I will demonstrate how to use these methods to teach collocation patterns with Chinese-specific constructional properties and semantically constrained lexical input that pose challenges for CFL learners. This presentation focuses on four sets of constructions covering a range of linguistic levels and categories that are challenging for CFL learners. These four constructions include (1) formality in adjective-noun construction [最佳 n], (2) synonymous idioms [無邊無際/无边无际的n] versus [無窮無盡/无穷无尽的n], (3) Semi-formulaic adjectival constructions [很有 n] and [很沒/很没 n], and (4) presentative constructions [f 出現/出现 n] [f 出現了/出现了 n] [f 存在著/存在着 n]. Based on corpus analysis of these constructions I will provide a lesson design to demonstrate how to integrate collocation patterns in classroom instruction.
Teaching Chinese Pragmatics: A Review
Feng Xiao 蕭峰
Pomona College
Originated from the concept of communicative competence, pragmatic competence, the ability to use language properly according to context, is considered equally important as grammatical competence such as knowledge of vocabulary and grammar. However, pragmatics is often not explicitly taught in a classroom setting, and prior research has found that second language pragmatic competence usually does not develop to the same level or at the same pace when grammatical competence increases over time. The proposed presentation reviews existing empirical research on instructed pragmatics with a focus on studies that examined Chinese pragmatic instruction. Findings suggest that an effective method of teaching Chinese pragmatics needs to include direct metapragmatic instruction and adequate follow-up practice. The follow-up practice may increase the degree of task complexity to stimulate sufficient classroom discourses (e.g., peer-to-peer, teacher-learner), to consolidate learned pragmatic features. Instructors also need to make learning tasks adaptive to learner-related factors such as foreign language aptitude and proficiency. One suggestion to improve learning tasks is to do action research on teaching methods recommended by previous studies. Finally, instructors may also think about teaching pragmatics beyond pragmatic features at the utterance level (e.g., speech acts) to promote learning pragmatics in interaction.
Migrant Workers and Transnational Students: The Unique Approaches in Teaching Chinese as a Second Language (CSL) in Taiwan
Chen-Cheng Chun 鍾鎮城
Professor of Chinese
Graduate Institute of Teaching Chinese as a Second/Foreign Language
National Kaohsiung Normal University
In this session I will talk about two unique teaching approaches emerging from the long CSL development in Taiwan. The first approach is about migrant workers’ CSL learning. The industry in Taiwan is lack of workers so that more migrant workers are hired which later triggers to the CSL learning needs. As their societal role becomes important, CSL teaching and learning for migrant workers are also turning to be more functional and task-based, especially for those work in manufacturing and care industry. The second unique approach refers to CSL learning for Grade 1-12 transnational students. Transnational student is a term that relates to the one who transfer to the Taiwanese Grade 1-12 schools to study. These students had experiences on studying oversea in different educational systems for years. Chinese is usually not their dominate language. Therefore, providing a support to CSL teaching and learning for Grade 1-12 transnational students has become one of the critical issues in educational system in Taiwan. Many significant research evidences will be provided throughout the session to verify how these two approaches influence CSL research directions in Taiwan. And I will end this session at explaining why these two approaches can possibly shed light on further motivation in the global CSL education development.
Key words: CSL teaching, migrant workers, transnational students
汉语教学中类词缀“热”的教学初探
朴兴洙教授
韩国外国语大学中国学学院
词汇是语言的重要组成部分，英国语言学家Wilkins指出“没有语法人们可以表达的事物寥寥无几，而没有词汇，人们将无法表达任何事物。”[i]–对词汇教学的重要性的肯定推及至汉语教学之中也表明词汇教学是汉语教学中的主要环节。而在汉语词汇系统中具有较强类推行和能产性的派生词也应是汉语词汇教学的重要部分。
汉语作为孤立语与属于屈折语的印欧语相比缺少严格意义上的词缀，大部分都是意义还未完全虚化的“类词缀”。最早提出“类词缀”概念的是吕叔湘先生，其在《汉语语法分析问题》（1979）中指出：“汉语里地道的语缀不多……有不少语素差不多可以算是前缀或后缀，然而还是差一点儿，只可以称为类前缀或类后缀……还得加上”类“是因为他们在语义上还没有完全虚化，有时还以词根的面貌出现。”[ii] 从吕叔湘先生对类词缀的表述可知，类词缀是意义有所虚化，但又未完全虚化（半实半虚）的介于词根和词缀间的造词成分。类词缀处于实词语素词根向虚词语素词缀过度的阶段，实语素虚化为类词缀是一种典型的语法化过程。语法化不仅指传统的实词虚化，还指一个新兴语法手段产生的历时过程。[iii] 而在汉语教学界，对外汉语教学大纲中提出了对汉语学习者掌握词缀的相应要求，《语法等级大纲》中在“黏着语素”部分列出了词尾（后缀）和词头（前缀）的概念并对常用的前缀和后缀提出了教学要求，这些收录的需要掌握的词缀，其中很大部分就是类词缀。因而类词缀不仅是汉语词汇系统中的重要组成部分也是汉语教学中不可忽视的一项重要工作。
本文以丁级语法大纲中列出的类词缀“热“为例，对”热“的语义、结构特点以及其在汉语教学中的重要性进行分析，并简单总结汉语教学中类词缀”热“的教学方法，希望对未来汉语教学中的类词缀教学有所帮助。