Check out this clip of a KOMO news interview with Shuang Gou (MATFL Chinese ’10), Michael Rawding (MIIS board member), and his daughter. Shuang Guo, teaches the first ever Chinese course offered at the Bush School in Seattle, WA and Michael’s daughter is one of her students. The students’ parents and school administration are extremely pleased with her teaching. Michael Rawding called her “fantastic!”
GSTILE’s annual publication, Discourse & Repartee is now available online in PDF format for your viewing pleasure. This year’s issue marks the 30th Anniversary of the TESOL program and has a special reflection on the past 30 years of the program. Be sure to check it out for additional information about happenings and changes with the TESOL/TFL program, as well as alumni updates and other exciting tidbits!
Happy reading!
Professor Dai was invited to conduct another 4 CFL Pedagogy (Chinese as a Foreign Language Pedagogy) workshops on Chinese Grammar Pedagogy and Curriculum Design of Content-based Instruction by National Hsinchu University of Education after completing 3 CFL Pedagogy Workshops for them last year. The workshops ran from December up until April, and the last one is scheduled for April 25th.
The above is a collaboration of Professor Dai’s workshop title pages from the National Hsinchu University of Education. The top left image is from workshop 1 in early December titled “Learning environments and Chinese programs in the U.S.”, the top right image is from workshop 2 in late December titled “Life, Cognition and CFL Pedagogy (Teaching Chinese)”, the bottom left image is from workshop 3 in January titled “Blogging Language Education in the Virtual Environment”, and the bottom right image is from workshops 4 and 5 in March titled “Chinese Grammar Pedagogy: An Introduction and Practicum”.
She was also invited to join a team of teacher training STARTALK program and will teach for a 2-week intensive STARTALK Program for non-native teachers of Chinese this summer at ACC/ Hamilton College.
In addition to the workshop invitation (National Hsinchu University and Education) and StarTalk Teacher-Training Program (Hamilton College), Professor Dai was invited to give a 2-hour talk on CFL Pedagogy on April 19th at the National Pingtong University of Education.
Participants in Professor Dai’s workshop are able to view her PPTs via GoogleDoc sharing.
Hsinchu Teaching Chinese 2011
On November 19th, the Monterey Institute celebrated International Week with its very own International Day! Local high school students were invited to come on over and experience a trip around the world without having to step foot outside of Monterey. The students were exposed to foreign countries and cultures from some of the international students and learned about real opportunities to go abroad from students who had taken part in various programs overseas.
In addition to learning about cultures, the TESOL/TFL students created mini language lessons and taught them to the high school students so that they could get exposure to a new language. Some of the languages taught included Spanish, French, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, and Russian.
In addition to teaching the high school students more about languages around the world, the TESOL/TFL students also had a chance to flex their lesson-planning muscles. All of their language lessons were adaptations of lessons originally planned for large groups of elementary school students when they taught at the International School of Monterey earlier in the semester.
As a sign of their appreciation, one of the local high schools sent thank you notes from all of their students. One student wrote, “MIIS – It was extremely fun learning the different languages. Totally fun day! I can’t wait to go next year.” Now that’s teacher motivation! We’re looking forward to next year’s International Day.
In December, the Principles and Practices in Language Education classes came together and showcased some of their knowledge on educational macrostrategies that they had been studying over the semester. The Kumar Trade Fair (named after B. Kumaravadivelu) has become a tradition for the TESOL/TFL students and represents a chance for the students to talk to people outside of the language education department about different teaching approaches.
For the Trade Fair, a small team of students designed and demonstrated a series of tasks that students could do as part of a language lesson. Some of the tasks included tasting salads to learn about different food cultures, thinking about dream jobs, and learning about cultural differences through watching a Saturday Night Live skit.
After the Trade Fair, the students gathered and discussed what they had learned from the Trade Fair, and most students agreed that it was interesting to see how a single macrostrategy could be represented in so many different ways. A member from another department mentioned that she had always considered her own department to be the one that tried to “save the world”, but she was pleased and surprised to see that the language education students were also creating activities which worked toward the same goal.