Monday, February 14, 2011

Virtual Teaching of Chinese Language

Wendy Owen

Shortage of Chinese language teachers in Oregon prompts virtual classes with educators in China

http://www.oregonlive.com/hillsboro/index.ssf/2011/02/shortage_of_chinese_language_teachers_prompts_virtual_classes_with_educators_in_china.html

2/6/2011

Topic: Teaching Chinese through virtual classes

The Education Service District is planning to offer Mandarin Chinese language classes in Oregon taught by teachers in China, through online courses. The article discusses how Chinese is replacing other foreign languages in many Oregon schools, but since TSPC does not offer an endorsement in Chinese language, it is difficult to acquire licensed Chinese language teachers. Classes will cost $600 per semester, per student, with a maximum of 10 students per class. Intended Audience: the Beaverton school district, students wanting to learn Chinese.

Key Points:

-The program teachers are recent graduates, mostly working out of Beijing University

-State law does not require the teachers to be certified to teach in Oregon; however ESD will ensure all of their virtual teachers will hold a license.

-The Confucius Institute at PSU will provide teachers from China to schools who apply for the program. They will serve as full-time assistants to the Mandarin language teachers.

-myChinese360, the company providing the program, is planning on sending teachers to the United States in the near future.


Relevance: This article is relevant to some of the key ideas we have been talking about in class. The first is the idea of technology. I think this is a great example of how technology can be integrated with education. It is interesting to see how this program will influence the future of virtual classes and teachers. Also there is an interesting idea of cross cultural learning. In this instance, teachers from China will experience what it is like to teach to American students, and not only that, but a I feel a new “virtual culture” will spawn from this program—the idea of a virtual learning and virtual teaching, teaching while not being physically present amongst students.

3 comments:

  1. Sounds like the wave of the future for some areas of study, especially those in which not many people can teach. I can see some challenges coming from teaching a language class, especially Mandarin Chinese, online. Hopefully the audio quality will be pretty good considering Chinese is a tonal language. Also, I would think a large part of learning something like this is through interactive reinforcement from the teacher ("No, it sounds more like this"... "that's good, just put more emphasis on this part, like this", and so on). I wonder if with the $600 fee they're including a weekly personal Skype video chat with the teacher because it just seems like a tough way to learn. But all that said, I think I'm on board with the general idea.

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  2. I do agree with Kevy on the topic of teacher re-inforcement--especially in regards to language, but in terms of student teacher interactions in general.

    I took an on-line conference style course two years ago; it was... strange. There was a real disconnect. instead of looking at the teacher in a classroom I was looking at a screen projecting the image of a teacher in classroom while I sat in my chair eating cereal. It did not feel real, and I doubt whether or not I will do it again.

    And while $600 won't break the bank for most families, it isn't chump change either. Will scholarships be available? I recognize that it costs money to run programs like this, but it feels as though public education is increasingly expensive--especially for the bells and whistles (music, sports, etc.), and now for an academic course. The state of education just worries me.

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  3. Kevy brings up a good point about having good equipment for efficient learning. I like your point about microphones, and the main ideas behind the tonal language. It made me consider other possible problems that could interfere with the learning, such as connections speed--I am an active "Skyper" and the most frustrating issues I encounter are frozen images, video that cuts in and out, and broken audio. Some speakers cannot project all sound frequencies, some speakers leave out a lot of the lower bass frequencies, that could possibly leave out important subtle nuances to the language. It would suck to spend most of your class session trying to get a strong signal.

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