丁香园AV

Grant program: Teaching and Learning Development Grant (TLDG)

Grant recipient: Cynthia Xie, School of Computing Science and Language Training Institute

Project Team: Sally Huang, research assistant

Timeframe: June 2015 to March 2016

Support provided: $5,000 for an RA, travel and dissemination costs, software, and reference books, plus assistance with proposal development

Course addressed: CHIN 290 鈥� Heritage Mandarin Chinese III

Final Report: View Cynthia Xie's final project report (PDF)

Description: The proposed project is to develop a customized online teaching and learning platform for the Heritage Mandarin Chinese courses I teach at 丁香园AV. The students for these courses fall into two main groups: 1) born and raised in a Chinese-speaking country or region before moving to Canada; and 2) born in Chinese-speaking homes in Canada. Although their proficiency level of Chinese varies, they share quite a few common characteristics in their learning of Mandarin Chinese: 1) most of the students know the basics of everyday language as well as some common Chinese cultural facts, but lack the linguistic knowledge and in-depth cultural understanding to explain 鈥渨hy鈥�; and 2) some students feel 鈥渢he course will be easy for me as I know the language鈥�, while others think 鈥渞eading and writing will be hard and boring.鈥�  These misconceptions hinder the students from engaging in their learning.

The proposed project will address these issues by developing an online course platform, which aims to: 1) integrate multi-media course materials (images, audios, videos, and web links) into the course; and 2) design authentic, creative, and interactive reading and writing exercises and activities with hints/instant feedback to engage students in practicing what they鈥檝e learned.

Questions addressed:

• Do students perceive the online teaching and learning platform effective in engaging them in learning?
  
• Do students perceive that the online teaching and learning platform improves their learning?
• What feedback do students have about how to improve the online teaching and learning platform?

Knowledge sharing:

Xie, C. (2016, April). Online teaching and learning platform for heritage Mandarin Chinese courses. Presentation at the 9th Canadian Teaching Chinese as a Second Language (TCLS) Association International Conference, Vancouver, BC.