Three Chinese language graduate students from the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures received national recognition at the November 2016 American Council of Teaching Foreign Languages (ACTFL) convention and Chinese Language Teachers Association (CLTA) annual meeting. PhD students Xue Xia and Liulin Zhang received prestigious awards for their work on Chinese language teaching. Master’s student Xi Yang presented a paper at the event.
Xue Xia presented “Assessing L2 Interactional Competence in Paired Speaking Tasks.” Xia was selected from nine contestants nationwide to receive the 2016 Cheng and Tsui Professional Development Award for Teachers of Chinese. Established in 2000, the award is given to support attendance of pre-collegiate and collegiate teachers at training workshops, seminars, conferences and other in-service learning experiences at local, national and international levels. A $600 cash prize accompanied the Cheng and Tsui award.
Liulin Zhang’s presentation, “Input Flood of Chinese Notional Passive Construction: A Usage-Based Account,” was awarded the 2016 Tao-chung Ted Yao Memorial Award in a competitive review. Her presentation was chosen from six nationwide proposals, and stood out from the three finalist presentations. The award was established in 2015 in honor of Professor Yao’s dedication to Chinese language teaching. This was the inaugural award at the ACTFL/CLTA convention, and was accompanied by a $750 cash award.
Xi Yang presented her paper, “Teaching of Mandarin and the Second Language Phonology of Chinese Tones.” Yang is the first masters student in the Chinese section whose paper was accepted by ACTFL/CLTA convention.
