Communication at the Heart of Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language

This portfolio demonstrates the author’s beliefs regarding effective methods for foreign language teaching. The first section includes the author’s teaching philosophy which addresses three themes: communicative language teaching (CLT), bringing authentic material into the foreign language classroom with the integration of technology, and developing lower-graders’ literacy in the Chinese dual-language immersion (DLI) classroom. Following the teaching philosophy are three artifacts that were originally written as term papers for courses in the Master of Second Language Teaching (MSLT) program. First, the language artifact reviews the approaches of asynchronous computer-mediated communication (ACMC) and synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC) for online tandem learning programs. Second, the literacy artifact demonstrates the importance of developing lower-graders’ literacy skills in the Chinese DLI classroom. Third, the cultural artifact focuses on examining Chinese requests strategies. Finally, the annotated bibliography containing three topics documents the authors’ journey of learning to be an effective language teacher in the MSLT program. The first topic is about the author’s acknowledgement of the CLT methodology with reading both compliments and criticism from others’ perspectives. In addition, the second topic is a process of realizing the significance of incorporating technology to facilitate foreign language learning in this digital era. Lastly, the third topic talks about the author’s understanding of the importance of DLI education and her interest of being a DLI teacher in the future