From the President
January 2011
We all owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to Immediate Past President Claudia Ross and our outgoing members of the Board of Directors, as well as to this past year’s Conference Chair Janet Xing, Nominations Chair Scott McGinnis, Awards Committee Chair Adam Ross, and Fund Raising Chair Wu Sue-mei, for their efforts and excellence. And as always, we are most grateful to Executive Director Chen Yea-Fen, JOURNAL editor Zhang Zhengsheng, NEWSLETTER editor Xie Tianwei, and WEB MASTER John Chang, for their dedication and contributions to our association.
Established in 1962, CLTA is the oldest Chinese language association in the United States. CLTA has increased in membership, is in the process of digitizing all of its back issues of the Journal of Chinese Language Teachers Association and is publishing all current and future issues in the digital form, as well as in hard copies. Its newsletters also appear in both forms. Many regional CLTA associations have been sprouting up. There has also been a steady increase in membership from the primary and secondary schools and Chinese community schools.
The theme for next year’s ACTFL annual meeting — Empowering Language Educators Through Collaboration — seems to be a most appropriate one for us as well as inclusiveness is a major theme of our association in our efforts of promoting CFL learning and teaching. To push our mission forward, we must continue to think globally and act locally and continue to create the best possible conditions for the learning and teaching of Chinese language, literature, and culture. It is through our daily individual and collective efforts that we will be able to make a difference in tackling the challenges ahead. In the spirits of being inclusive, CLTA has identified a number of initiatives for the coming year:
- Continue to play a leadership role in the field in generating knowledge in the disciplines of Chinese linguistics, Chinese language acquisition, and Chinese pedagogy. Expand our research focus by including K-12 Chinese learning and teaching into our research initiatives.
- Continue to attract a larger and more diverse group of students to the study of Chinese language. We need to better understand who our learners are and to develop curriculum models and to find ways to direct and entice an increasing number of Americans from a variety of social and discipline backgrounds to the serious study of Chinese language and culture.
- Continue to collaborate with other professionals organizations, such as CLASS, the National Council of Associations of Chinese Language Schools and the Chinese School Association in the United States and other sectors such as the government and business ones, for resources sharing, articulation, and field advocacy
With thanks for your contributions, and all good wishes for the coming year,
Ke Chuanren 柯传仁
December 28, 2010
Professor of Chinese and Professor of Second Language Acquisition
Department of Asian and Slavic Languages and Literatures
659 Phillips
University of Iowa
Iowa City, IA 52242-1323
Phone: (319) 335-2156
E-mail: chuanren-ke@uiowa.edu