UH Manoa sponsors Chinese language summer sports camp

University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
Contact:
Yen Chun, 550-0509
Summer Sports Camp
Posted: Jul 21, 2008

The Confucius Institute at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa is sponsoring a Chinese Language Immersion Sports Camp with a Beijing Olympics theme. This is the final week of the 3-week camp, which is in its second year.



Participants are 27 students, ages 12-17, from Hawaii and the mainland U.S. They are learning Chinese language, culture, ping pong and martial arts for 3 weeks (July 7 — 25) and are staying at UH Mānoa‘s Hale Noelani residence hall.



The camp also provides a learning opportunity for 13 teachers-in-training in how to teach the Chinese language using the "task-based method". Lead faculty is Dr. Cynthia Ning, who has written several text books, created video tapes teaching Chinese for the Hawaii State Department of Education, and recently aided Yale University in producing a series of movies teaching youngsters K-12 the Chinese language.



The sports camp combines 3-4 hours of language instruction a day, with an hour each of training in ping pong and martial arts. Students will approach Novice-Mid ability in each of four skills, gain an understanding of the significance of the Beijing Olympics, and develop a fondness for learning about Chinese culture and trust that they can learn to communicate in Chinese. The program also includes field trips to supplement the learning experience and expose participants to Hawai‘i culture and history.



The program is funded by STARTALK under a $100,000 grant from the U.S. federal government and the Confucius Institute, which was established in 2006 at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa with support from the Ministry of Education, People‘s Republic of China. STARTALK is a collaboration of The National Foreign Language Center at the University of Maryland, the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Defense. Its purpose is to support innovative summer programs teaching Arabic and Chinese.

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For more information:

http://chinesestudies.hawaii.edu/confucius/program/summer/index.html


For more information, visit: http://chinesestudies.hawaii.edu/confucius/program/summer/index.html