Confucius Institute at Texas A&M University Hosts the 2017 CLTA-Texas Annual Conference

August 5th, 2017, the Annual conference of CLTA-Texas (Chinese Language Teachers Association) took place in Texas A&M campus. A total number of 60 Language teachers of elementary schools and middle schools from the states of Texas and Oklahoma as well as teachers at Texas A&M and doctoral students attended the conference.

At the conference

The conference lasted for two days. Miao-Fen Tseng was the keynote speaker. Professor Tseng is the Inaugural Director of the Institute of World Languages and an Associate Professor of Chinese at the University of Virginia (UVa). She is an expert in second language acquisition for teaching Chinese as a foreign language and has received the 2016 Helen Warriner-Burke FLAVA Distinguished Service Award in recognition of her contribution to Chinese language education. Since 2008, she has served as the director of the STARTALK Chinese Teacher Academy in partnership with the Virginia STARTALK Chinese Student Academy at UVa.

Keynote speaker Dr. Miao-Fen Tseng

In the conference, Dr. Tseng delivered a talk on “Reshaping a Student-centered Chinese Language Curriculum through Co-create UVA” and discussed with the audience about how student-centered learning can bring positive effects in classroom learning. The presenter introduced a "co-creative" approach to Chinese language teaching that invites collaborative efforts between the instructor and students to reactivate and embody curricular and pedagogical conceptualization.

This workshop began with teachers’ self-assessment of ten key concepts on research-supported best practices of language input and output, followed by clarification of misconceptions that teachers may have in teaching Chinese grammar. Underlying second language acquisition theories with accompanying illustrated examples were presented to better teacher participants’ understanding. After highlighting the features of tasks, the presenter used sample must-learn grammatical structures at the novice and intermediate levels to demonstrate how student-centered communicative tasks can be created, implemented and assessed. Learners’ learning outcomes, feedback, and the results of empirical studies will be highlighted. To conclude the workshop, Dr. Tseng introduced the essence of the post-method pedagogy and propose future directions for Chinese language educators, practitioners, and researchers to ponder upon, collaborate, and seek resolutions for possible change and reform in pedagogical grammar in relation to teaching, material development, and assessments.

Dr. Douglas Palmer, Interim Provost & Executive Vice President of Texas A&M University delivering an opening speech

This annual conference served as a platform for sharing advanced teaching theories and teaching experiences. It also helped participants gain more knowledge and potentially improved their teaching outcome.