avoiding pitfalls when starting a chinese program andrew corcoran head of school © cais institute...

Avoiding Pitfallswhen Starting a Chinese Program

Andrew CorcoranHead of School

www.cais.org

© CAIS Institute 2008. All Rights Reserved.

Pitfalls at Various Stages

• Planning• Initial classes• When it starts to get difficult• Seeking Assistance• Continual Teacher Development• Monitoring Effectiveness• Some Special Features of Chinese


Planning

• Mission• Language• Parents• Teachers• Students


Look at Your Mission• International/Global Education• Type of Program

– Immersion– Foreign language

• Developing Leaders for the Future– Increased emphasis on China and all of Asia– National, State, and Local delegations visiting China

• Academic Excellence– Problem Solving– Different world view embodied in the language– Speaking Chinese and brain development

• Opportunities after graduation– Offered at the next level– Other opportunities


About the Language

•Mandarin (Putonghua), Cantonese…

•Character sets–Traditional (Taiwan, Hong Kong, Overseas Chinese, Culture)

–Simplified (Mainland China, Singapore, Literacy, recent arrivals)

•Phonetic system–Hanyu Pinyin (Wade-Giles, Yale)

–Juyin Fuhao

•Materials–Appropriate for US students


Parents • Expectations

– Category 4 (now Category 3)

– Cannot provide support

• Chinese– Expectations

– Regional differences


Finding Teachers

•Other teachers who are affected

•Language proficiency

•Eligible to work

•Credential –Scarcity

–Emerging programs

•Teaching experience (Institute training/orientation)

–Overall

–With American students

–In the philosophy of your school© CAIS Institute 2008. All Rights Reserved.

Students

• Range– Beginners

– Heritage learners

– Weekend Schools

• Level of interest– From Parents

– From Students

– Commitment or cool

• Starting grade levels


Initial Classes

• Speaking • Writing • Culture• Political


Speaking

• Accuracy of Tones– Purpose

– Future expectations

• Popular vs. Academic– Email and instant messaging

• Code Switching– Foreign terms used in China

• Incorporating Songs


Writing and Reading

• Writing is very time and memory intense– Standard approach

– Pinyin only in the first year (Chinese as Foreign Language)

– Speak/Read/Write

• Reading levels– Lack of high interest/low vocabulary books

– Fonts with phonetics=problem?

– Translations of abridged western classics?

• Computer– All computers enabled (Students “able to enable”)

– Computer as writing tool


Culture

• Holidays– Chinese (Lunar) New Year and February– Autumn Moon festival etc– Incorporate with other cultures

• China Town– Bargaining– Food

• Museums– Art– Calligraphy

• Film– Period films– Modern (excellent selections in the last 20 years)


Sample Films

• My Memories of Old Beijing (1983) A woman in Taiwan reminisces of her life in Beijing.• The Story of Qiu Ju (1993) Set in a Chinese village, the pregnant peasant Qui Ju seeks justice after the village

elder assaults her husband. In the process, she gets caught in the mess of an exasperating legal system.

• To Live (1994) An impoverished couple faces their personal and political problems from 1940 to 1960.• The King of Masks (1999) Forced by the custom of handing down his crafts to a male successor, Mr. Wang, the

heirless mask magic performer, has to buy a child in order to preserve his unique art. After learning the child’s secret, Mr. Wang faces some very hard choices.

• Yi Yi (2000) Yi Yi chronicles three generations of a family in Taiwan mired in a crisis of self-doubt.• Not One Less (2000) The inspiring tale of Wei, a 13-year-old girl who is asked by her community to serve as a

substitute teacher in a poor farming village school.• Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles (2005) Hoping to mend a deep rift with his dying son, a Japanese fisherman sets off for China’s

Yunnan province to fulfill his son’s dream where he encounters a jailed Chinese folk-opera singer and his little boy.


Geo-Political

• Teacher experience– The three “T’s” (Tibet, Taiwan, Tiananmen and Falunggong)

• Global Perspective– History (Tibet)

– Cultural Organization (stability)

• Flags– Do not fly PRC and ROC together

• Source materials– Mainland (S)

– Singapore (S)

– Taiwan (T or Full Form)

– Hong Kong (T or Full Form and insure hanyu pinyin)


When it starts to get difficult

• Degree of Difference• Exchanges• Other Teachers• Professional Development


Degree of Difficulty

• Category 4 (3) language– Three times as long as category 1 to achieve proficiency

– Uninformed parents may assign blame

• Assessing Proficiency Levels (Jiun)– Interacting beyond the teacher

– AP, STAMP, NOELLA, OPI

• Special Case of Reading– Frustration trying to read outside the text book

– Authentic materials

• Email


Exchange

• Student Exchange by 3rd year– Start planning in the 1st year

– Keep students and families informed

– Plan well

• Language based with home stay– An authentic assessment

– Participants must demonstrate some level of proficiency


Other Teachers

• Involve Early– Replacement fears– Integrated units

• Angel Island “immigration and migration”• Gender Roles and Children “King of Masks”

• Teacher Exchange– Schools in China appreciate

• Native English speakers • Western methods

• Incorporate China throughout– Many China examples can meet standards

• Migrant workers, immigration, great depression


Professional Development

• Student centered and interactive– Sound FL pedagogy

– Eliminating past practice

• Differentiating levels– Advanced levels (AP)

– Heritage/weekend school students

• Incorporating China different subject areas– Chinese teacher as a reference (with care)


Seeking Assistance

• CAIS (www.caisinstitute.org ) • Local schools and universities • Heritage communities • Asia Society (http://www.asiasociety.org/ )• CLASS (http://www.classk12.org/ )• The China National Office for Teaching Chinese

International (http://english.hanban.edu.cn/ )


Continued Development of Chinese Teachers

• CAIS annual conference March 13-15, 2008 in San Francisco

• ACTFL conference (Often geared more towards university level in Chinese)

• Summer programs • Opportunities in Mainland China and Taiwan• Funding opportunities as a critical language (US

government) or language of interest to foundations


Monitoring Program Effectiveness

Partial List (Jiun)

AP

SATII

HSK (Mainland China), Chinese Proficiency Test (Taiwan)

STAMP http://casls.uoregon.edu/stamp2.php or http://onlinells.com/

NOELLA http://casls.uoregon.edu/noella.php or http://onlinells.com/

OPI (ACTFL)


Special Features About Chinese

• Mandarin, putonghua, 普通话– Other dialects (Cantonese, Hakka, etc.) may have support from

local heritage communities

• Simplified or Traditional/Full Form/Complex中美國際學校中美国际学校

– Simplified in Mainland China and Singapore– Traditional in Taiwan and Hong Kong– Diaspora (overseas Chinese) depends on history and location

• Transcription of Sounds– Hanyu Pinyin-Romanized alphabet replaced Yale, Wade-Giles, etc.

Most commonly used. Ease of use with computers. Near universal in US universities.

– Zhuyin Fuhao-used exclusively in Taiwan. Uses symbols derived from characters (roughly like Japanese Hiragana)


Special Features About Chinese 2

• Tones – 4 plus a neutral tone in Mandarin

• Characters – 3,500 needed for daily literacy demands– About 2,500 simplified out of 7,000 used by “educated speakers”

• Spoken language (koutouyu 口头语 ) differs from written language (shumianyu 书面语 )

• Grammar is different from English/Indo-European languages – (I eat lunch at school vs. I at school eat lunch)

• Cultural references in the language are different from English/Indo-European languages


Thank [email protected]


avoiding pitfalls when starting a chinese program andrew corcoran head of school © cais institute...

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