Calendar

2015 CLTA-WA Spring Workshop

Empowering students with Well-designed and successfully-implemented tasks and rubrics
 

Presenter: Dr. Miao-fen Tseng (曾妙芬)

Co-sponsors:

CIWA (Confucius Institute of the State of Washington) East Asia Center, Jackson School of International Studies, UW, Seattle
Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, WA

Date: March 28, 2015 @ 8:00 am – 4:00 pm

Location: Thomson Hall Rm 101, UW

Cost: Free for members           $20.00 for non-members
(CLTA-WA annual membership fee:  $30.00 )

Registration: http://goo.gl/ip4u5Y

The participants who attend the workshop in its entirety will receive six clock hours. No partial clock-hours will be given.

Workshop Description: Inspired by the Task-based Language Teaching (TBLT) featuring student-centeredness and authenticity, the presenter has pilot-tested a series of authentic and pedagogical tasks along with task-specific checklists and rubrics in light of empirical research projects at the regional and national levels since 2008. In this presentation, the presenter will synthesize the common features of the TBLT based on multiple definitions in the literature, analyze field-tested sample tasks, and identify, discuss, and critique best practices for creating the feasible framework for task-supported language teaching through the illustration of different types of tasks and rubrics for general and specific purposes. The presenter will also showcase useful and appropriate authentic materials and summarize effective principles for material selection to help create formative and summative assessments in authentic learning settings for world language and CFL learners. After the presentation, teacher participants will be able to:

1. Understand the advantages of incorporating tasks in instruction; 2. Distinguish exercises from pedagogical and authentic tasks; 3. Get familiar with different types of tasks and rubrics for assessments; 4. Identify and apply strategies for effective task implementation; 5. Incorporate a wide array of authentic materials to create single and well-sequenced tasks across three communicative modes.

Presenter Bio:

Dr. Miao-fen Tseng (曾妙芬) is the Inaugural Director of the Institute of World Languages and Associate Professor of Chinese in the Department of East Asian Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at the University of Virginia (UVa). Since 2008, she has received approximately $70,0000 from the US federal government to develop and direct the Virginia STARTALK Chinese Teacher Academy and the Virginia STRATALK Chinese Student Academy. She has been invited by the National Foreign Service Center to serve on STARTALK Task Force in 2014-15.  Her enduring passion in Chinese language education has driven her to proactively involve in extensive services such as serving as the K-12 program evaluator, OPI certified tester, advisor for guest teachers from Office of Chinese Language Council International (Hanban), and offering graduate level courses in teaching Chinese as a foreign language in the US, China, and Taiwan under the auspices of various collaborative initiatives and professional development programs. Many of her trainees are now teaching at secondary and post-secondary institutions in the U.S. and abroad. She has also actively played different roles in the national development of AP Chinese since 2004, including, but are not limited to, AP Chinese consultant and academic advisor for AP Chinese and Japanese course audit. She has actively promoted Chinese language and culture nationally and internationally and is the founder and president of the Chinese Language Teachers Association of Virginia (2009-2013) and a member of the CLTA Board of Directors (2011-14). Her Intermediate Chinese was recognized as one of the top ten undergraduate Chinese language courses in a nationwide study of Chinese courses completed by the Educational Policy Improvement Center in Oregon in 2007. She also received the Ron Walton Presentation Prize and the Jiede Empirical Research grant awarded by the Chinese Language Teachers Association (CLTA) and is the author of numerous articles and three books: AP Chinese Language and Culture Teacher’s Guide, Promoting Professionalism in Teaching AP Chinese (推動專業化的AP中文教學: 大學二年級中文教學成功模式的探討與應用), and The Handbook of Tasks and Rubrics for Teaching Mandarin Chinese (Volume I).

Schedule:

8:00-8:30 Registration

Morning

8:30-8:45: Opening

8:40-10:15 Presentation   10:15-10:30 Break

10:30-12:00: Presentation

12:00-12:45 Lunch(on your own)

Afternoon

12:45-2:00 Presentation

2:00–2:15: Break

2:15-3:45: Presentation

3:45-4:00: Closing

Details about the AGM will be sent out in a later message.

CLTA-WA 2015 Summer Workshop

Task-based Learning

Presenters:
Nyan-Ping Bi, University of Washington
Alice Flores, Annie Wright Schools, Tacoma
Jingwen (Vivian) Li, Beacon Hill International School, Seattle

Co-sponsors:
Sunny World, Child Care and Early Learning, Bellevue, WA
East Asia Center, University of Washington, Seattle, WA

Date:              Sunday, August 23, 2015

Time: 1:00 – 4:00 pm
Location:        Sunny World, 16007 NE 8th St, Bellevue, WA 98008.
Butterfly Room

Cost:               Free for members
$10.00 for non-members
(CLTA-WA annual membership fee:  $30.00 for 07/01/2015—06/30/2016)
Registration:    https://goo.gl/pjNKPG

This workshop is in part funded by Professional Development Grant from CLTA USA.The participants who attend the workshop in its entirety will receive 3 clock hours. No partial clock hours will be given.

Refreshments will be provided.

CLTA-WA Homepage: https://jxi.ywi.mybluehost.me/

Workshop Program:

12:30 –1:00 Registration and social time
1:00 — 3:15 Task-based Learning presentations by three speakers
3:15 — 4:00 Breakout discussion and sharing session with three presenters

Parking and Direction: http://goo.gl/nMMRth

Please park at the garage and take the elevator to the 2nd floor. The workshop will be held at Butterfly Room. You may refer to the map in the next page or by click the link above.

WAFLT Fall Conference is October 8-10, 2015 at Wenatchee Coast Hotel and Convention Center, Wenatchee.

Here it is the link to the key note speakers, workshops  and registration information:

http://waflt.net/conferences.html

Dear members and friends of CLTA-WA,

On behalf of the Board of CLTA-WA, I would like to invite you to attend our annual fall workshop, to be held on November 14, 2015 at University Puget Sound.  Professor Cynthia Ning from University of Hawaii will lecture on the topic of “Task-based Instructional Activities to Maximize Language Learning with Authentic Material and Reading Aloud“.  Dr. Ning is a distinguished scholar and educator of Chinese language and we are very honored to have her leading our workshop.

The workshop will be free to our members and for non-members, a modest fee of $20.00. You’ll be able to sign up for membership at the workshop. Our annual membership due is $30.00 and the cycle runs from July 31 to June 30 the following year.

We would like to acknowledge our co-sponsors, Confucius Institute of the State of Washington (CIWA) for its generous financial support, University of Puget Sound for providing the workshop venue and Washington Association for Language Teaching (WAFLT) for providing the clock hours.

Workshop registration: https://goo.gl/7Sruha

Please see the attachment CLTA-WA Fall Workshop 2015 Announcement for more information. Please mark the date on your calendar and spread the word.

See you at the workshop!

Best,

Cheyenne Matthewson

President, CLTA-WA

Eastside (Kirkland): Making Taiwanese Lumpia (润饼)

Coordinator: Sarah Yao
Date: Sunday, 1/31/2016
Time: 5:00pm – whenever
Location: Sarah’s house in Rose Hill, Kirkland
Activities: Networking, making Taiwanese Lumpia (润饼) and idea sharing. For those who would like to stay longer after the main activities, Sarah has planned a Taiwanese movie viewing.
Number of participants: 20

Sign-up: https://goo.gl/egNyE1

West Seattle:  Potluck

Coordinator: Meitsu Chuang-Mendel

Date: Saturday, 2/20/2016

Time: 11:00am — 4:00pm

Location: Meitsu’s house in West Seattle

Activities: Networking, idea and food sharing, walking in Lincoln Park, tea/coffee time

Number of participants: 15

Sign-up: https://goo.gl/8ph86V

Dear members,

We would like to invite you to the 2016 annual general meeting of CLTA-WA.  Come meet the board members, mingle with other fellow members and learn more about CLTA-WA.  We will have prize drawing and special teaching ideas/resources sharing.   Refreshments and light lunch will be provided.

Venue:  Kirkland Public Library

308 Kirkland Ave, Kirkland, WA 98033

Date:    Saturday, June 4

Time:    12:30 – 2:30pm

RSVP:    https://goo.gl/9t2FD0  (Please rsvp by Thursday, 6/2)

Agenda for the Annual General Meeting

1. Greeting and opening of the meeting (12:30pm)

2. Report for 2015-2016 (12:35 – 12:55pm)

3. Meet the new board (12:55 – 1:05pm)

4. Lunch/teaching resources sharing and social time (1:05 – 2:30pm)

We look forward to seeing you at the annual general meeting!

Best,

Cheyenne Matthewson
President, CLTA-WA

We proudly co-sponsor the 2016 Why Learn Chinese Competition

                                    Why Learn Chinese Competition
WAACE’s “Why Learn Chinese Competition” is a written/visual submission-based competition. Students all over Washington can enter for a chance to win prizes up to $200 by creatively answering the prompts:

6th-12th “When American Dream Meets Chinese Dream…” 

K-5th      “A famous Chinese Person Who Has Influenced you”

What does the American dream mean to you? Do you know the Chinese dream? How can both dreams come true? What our young generation can do to improve a more positive US-China relationship? Why learn Chinese?

Competition Objectives

Our goal is to generate interest in learning Chinese among American students, to give them the competitive edge and global perspective needed to succeed in the modern-day economy, and to increase Chinese language learning capacity in Washington.

President Obama, during the first state visit to Washington by China’s President Xi Jinping, announced a sweeping new nationwide initiative to see 1 million American students studying Mandarin by 2020. Inspired by President Obama’s 1 million strong” initiative, our vision for this year’s competition is to let the youth voice on building a more positive relationship between US and China be heard by US president. Through this grassroots initiative, we wish to engage and prepare students to enter the dynamic global environment of the 21st century, where we—the younger generation—will be responsible for maintaining the growing economic, political, and cultural ties between the US and China. Ultimately, we hope to spread awareness about the growing importance of learning Chinese, and provide a platform of expression for the reserve of community support for bringing Chinese into more schools.

Encouraged by China’s President Xi Jiping, and with the strong support from the Consulate General of China, we are honored to hold an even bigger competition by including elementary students this year. We hope our competition will help students put more enthusiasm in learning Chinese language and culture and participating actively in the friendly exchange between US and China. 

Competition Description

Who?

Middle and high school students are welcome to submit entries to creatively address the question of “When the American Dream Meets the Chinese Dream”.  What does the American dream mean to you? Do you know the Chinese dream? How can both dreams come true?What our young generation can do to improve a more positive US-China relationship? Why learn Chinese?

In order to encourage young learners, WAACE also provides a particular prompt of “Describe a Famous Chinese Person Who Has Influenced You” to K-5 students.  All entries are evaluated with the same criteria.

What?

Contestants can submit either:

A written entry: an essay (450-600 words), poem (8+ stanzas) or

 A video entry: a song, speech or another creative format (2- 5 minutes)

When?

Online submissions until July 31 , 2016.

Where?

Complete the registration form at  http://www.waace.org/wlc.html and submit responses digitally using the entry form. Send video entries directly to president@waace.org, or upload to an online sharing service and submit the link. Limit one entry per contestant.
The entry must be original, in English or Chinese, and depict the prompts of ” When the American Dream Meets the Chinese Dream” (6-12) or “A Famous Chinese Person Who Has Influenced You” (K-5) Limit one entry per contestant.

The award ceremony will be held at the University of Washington. Date TBA.

Why?

Share ideas on the importance of China, and win cash prizes!

Grand Prize: $200

Winner’s entry will be recommended by WAACE and mailed or emailed to the White House. The grand prize winner will also be the ambassador for 2017 WLC competition. 

Three categories: High School, Middle School and Elementary School

First Place: $100 (1 from each category)

Second Place: $80 (3 from each category)

Third Place: $50 (5 from each category)

Finalists (top 15%):

Certificate of Excellence

All entries will be reviewed by a judging panel composed of certified teachers and professionals with Chinese experience. They will be looking for superior ideas, message, and content rather than writing/performing skills. Our chief judges will decide the grand prize.