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WORKSHOP HIGHLIGHTS

OVERVIEW

As part of our mission to serve the development and enhancement of Asian language and area studies in the United States, the University of Hawai'i National Foreign Language Resource Center will offer 2 two-week intensive language courses to non-native-speaking teachers currently or imminently in service teaching Chinese and Japanese at the K-16 level, with a focus on teachers in underserved areas. The intensive courses, to be delivered entirely over the World Wide Web using a tested and proven pedagogic model, will focus on the development and/or maintenance of communicative language skills at the Advanced level, with strong emphasis on written communication meeting high standards of literacy.

PARTICIPANTS

Participants (10-20 in each of the two courses, one course per language) will be selected for each two-week course on the basis of professional need. The target audience comprises non-native-speaking teachers, including heritage speakers of limited proficiency in the written language, whose professional qualifications would be boosted by additional training in written expression. There will be no tuition charges for these special non credit-bearing courses; instruction will be financially supported by the NFLRC.

CONTENT

Participants will complete four thematic units based on authentic materials for an equivalent of thirty contact hours of instruction. A daily time commitment of approximately 4 hours of on- and off-line computer work will be expected. The Web-based courses also feature a robust interactive component, so that participants will form an online learning community in which they will perform role-play tasks, hold discussions, and share compositions. The "online community" of the classroom will remain open for one year beyond the intensive course, so that participants may return at will to explore the course environment further and/or to discuss topics of professional interest.

APPLICATION & SELECTION

The application process will be competitive, by committee review, with applicants demonstrating the greatest professional need receiving priority. "Professional need" shall be deemed to include the need for teaching resources in the applicant’s location versus available means to develop those teaching resources, as well as applicant’s demonstrated need for language maintenance and development.

FEATURES OF THESE WEB-BASED CHINESE AND JAPANESE WORKSHOPS

In each course, participants will find:

• Lessons based on authentic texts (Japanese) or video interviews (Chinese), with a mixture of activities
• A balance of tasks performed independently and tasks involving communication with fellow participants in Web-based forums
• Carefully designed lesson stages leading participants from pre-reading through skill-getting and composition
• Daily attention and support from the instructor through the Grammar Clinic and the "Café" forum

SPECIAL OPPORTUNITY FOR CHINESE TEACHERS

For interested Chinese teachers, there is a special additional opportunity to travel to Hawaii after the online workshop for intensive hands-on teacher training in the STARTalk Sports and Language Immersion Camp (planned for July 6-31, 2009) at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in Honolulu. Pending the approval of funding for the 2009 STARTalk Hawaii Sports and Language Immersion Camp,Chinese teachers successfully completing the online summer institute will be eligible for up to $800 travel defrayment for the STARTalk Hawaii camp. Please see the STARTalk website for the latest information.

For more information, email Stephen Tschudi

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