Archive for category: NEWS!

The 2015 Call for Papers for the CLTA annual meeting are now available on the Meeting page.

Submissions are due January 14, 2015.

The full program for the CLTA International Symposium on Chinese Language Teaching and Learning is now available for download.

Early Bird Registration for the first CLTA International Symposium on Chinese Language Teaching & Learning begins today (4/20). Current CLTA members can register at member rates. The Symposium will take place October 25-26th, in Bloomington, Indiana. More information can be found on the conference information page. Visit the Online registration form to register today!

Recognizing that study abroad experiences play an integral part in the development of second language acquisition, CLTA is delighted to announce the launch of the 2014 CLTA Study Abroad Site Visit Award.  Initiated by the Associated Colleges in China (ACC), a study abroad program in China administered by Hamilton College, this newly established award supports site visits to study abroad programs in China and Taiwan. The primary goal of this award is to help teachers to gain insight into their students’ learning processes in the target setting, and encourage teachers to design effective instruction to advance students’ linguistic and cultural competencies beyond study abroad programs.

Application and eligibility information can be found on the CLTA Study Abroad Site Visit Award page. (Deadline: March 31, 2014)

The CLTA Walton Lifetime Achievement Award, founded in 1998 by friends and colleagues of Ronald Walton, and funded in 2005 by a perpetual endowment from the Cheng & Tsui Company in honor of Ronald Walton’s (1943-1996) lifetime dedication to Chinese language education and cross-cultural understanding, is given for overall contributions to the field of Chinese language pedagogy. All members in the community of Chinese language teaching and research, with the exception of current CLTA officers and members of the Board of Directors, are eligible for the award. The Walton Award consists of a plaque presented at the CLTA Annual Meeting.

To nominate a candidate for the Walton Award, please submit: 1) a letter of nomination describing the candidate’s scholarship, service, leadership, and innovative contributions in the field of Chinese language teaching, 2) a current Curriculum Vitae of the nominated candidate, and 3) two letters of support from other CLTA members addressing the candidate’s accomplishments in the categories mentioned in (1).

More information about the CLTA Walton Lifetime Achievement Award on our website:  https://www.clta-us.org/awards/clta-walton-award-walton-presentation-prize/

Nominations for the Walton Award should be sent (preferably as PDF file attachments via email) by April 30, 2014 to Cecilia Chang, cchang@williams.edu; or by postal mail to:

Cecilia Chang
Associate Professor of Chinese
Department of Asian Studies
85 Mission Park Drive
Williams College
Williamstown, MA 01267

The name of the winner will be announced and Award presented at the CLTA Annual Meeting. The name of the winner will also be reported in the January issue of CLTA Newsletter and on this web page.

Thank you in advance for your nomination submissions.

Cecilia Chang
Chair of the 2014 CLTA Awards Committee

Please be aware that the deadline for submitting a proposal to present at the 12th New York International Conference on Teaching Chinese is February 15. Please visit http://clta-gny.org/14conf/14conf.html for details. Keynote speakers will be announced shortly.

Teaching Chinese in the Global Community:
Developing Communicative Competence in a New Age

The 12th New York International Conference on Teaching Chinese, sponsored by the Chinese Language Teachers Association of Greater New York (CLTA-GNY), New York University and Nanjing University, will be held on Saturday, May 3, and Sunday, May 4, 2014 at New York University’s Kimmel Center. The full conference program begins with breakfast on May 3, and ends after lunch on Sunday, May 4. We welcome your participation!

As Chinese language educators, we are charged with the task of teaching Chinese to studentsof all ages, from a wide variety of backgrounds, with widely varying interests and experiences and differing motivations for studying Chinese. Our students often have limited knowledge about China and limited exposure to Chinese language and culture.

The world continues to get smaller as advances in technology connect us more closely every day. Yet, at the same time, gaps in our understanding still occur – cultural insensitivity exists and we fail to understand each other and truly respect our varying cultural viewpoints. So, as we consider culture, we must not just traditional culture, which informs our deepest belief systems, but also modern and popular culture, which reflects the real lives of our students and their counterparts in China. I t is not enough to teach language alone: we must teach culture, develop cross-cultural values such as mutual understanding, respect, tolerance, empathy, and many others through comparative and contrastive study of Asian culture and Western culture.

As teachers, we need ongoing support and training in understanding the schools in which we teach, our students and their parents; well-planned and structured training in new trends of standards-based learning to align our teaching to the Common Core Standards, immersion strategies, and the teaching of culture. We must find ways to reach our students, digital natives for whom technology is second nature and whose ways of learning may be influenced by the key role that multimedia devices play in their lives. We must base our teaching on the latest theoretical and linguistic breakthroughs to assist us in developing our instructional plans and syllabi for the teaching of Chinese.

We must be committed to improving the quality of Chinese instruction in schools, and to the development of a student population with a global competence. Join us at the 2014 Annual Conference of the Chinese Language Teachers Association of Greater New York to discuss these ideas and continue in the professional development of the Chinese teaching community!

We invite you to submit a proposal for our conference! All proposals on the teaching of Chinese in are welcome, including but not limited to innovative approaches in addressing the following areas of interest:

• CULTURAL Competence: developing global competence and mutual understanding, working with diverse students, pragmatics.

• TECHNOLOGICAL Competence: using technology to engage our students and advance their learning

• PEDAGOGICAL Competence: curriculum and instruction, including standards-based teaching and learning and assessment

• LINGUISTIC competence: research and advances in linguistics to inform our teaching

• PROGRAMMATIC competence : Teacher training and professional development, sustainability of programs, articulation of programs.

The CLTA-GNY Conference Committee welcomes submissions of one-page proposals on subjects relevant to the above themes or other topics of interest to the K-16 Chinese teaching community. Papers may be either in Chinese or English. Panel proposals as well as proposals for individual papers will be considered. All proposals will be reviewed anonymously. Individual papers will be grouped into panels by themes. Panels will be 75 minutes long with four presenters.

Proposals should be submitted to clta.gny@gmail.com as a Word document and are due no later than February 15, 2014. Late submissions will not be considered.

Questions: clta.gny@gmail.com

The conference website is http://clta-gny.org/14conf/14conf.html, where you can see updates, info about registration, conference venue, hotel recommendations, conference chairs and conference committee.

Please note the following:

The conference fee is $30.

We’ll be only accepting online registration.

Keynote speakers will be announced in due time.
Hope to see you all at NYU next May!

CLTA-GNY Conference Committee

……………………………………………..
Chinese Language Teachers Association of Greater New York
http://clta-gny.org

The Chinese Language Teachers Association (U.S.A.) is pleased to announce its First International Symposium on Chinese Language Teaching and Learning to be held October 25–26, 2014, at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, U.S.A.

SYMPOSIUM THEME: Chinese L2 Instruction in a Global Context

CONFERENCE WEBSITE:  https://www.clta-us.org/clta-iscltl

CALL FOR PROPOSALS

CLTA-ISCLTL 2014 invites proposals for panels, individual presentations and posters on Chinese L2 instructional theories and pedagogy. We believe this is an invaluable opportunity for Chinese L2 teachers, administrators, and researchers to share knowledge in promotion of the best practices in the field. Attendees can expect enlightening presentations on a variety of topics supporting the 2014 symposium’s theme, “Chinese L2 Instruction in a Global Context.” All presenters must register for the conference but do not need to be a current CLTA member. Please visit the conference website for proposal submission guidelines and procedures.

Proposal submissions are due by March 18, 2014, 11:59 p.m. EST. Please refer to the Proposal Submission Guidelines for detailed information regarding submission procedures. On-line submissions will open on February 15.

The CLTAC 2014 Spring Conference Organizing Committee invites submission of proposals for 20-minute presentations. As in previous years, abstract proposals in all areas of Chinese teaching and learning are welcome, such as theories, methodologies and strategies, curricula, teaching materials, technology, acquisition, Chinese linguistics, culture factors, AP Chinese, and teaching credentials.

IMPORTANT DATES
Proposal submission deadline: Sunday, January 12, 2014
Notification of proposal status: Monday, February 10, 2014
Early registration deadline (postmarked): Monday, February 24, 2014
Conference date: Saturday, March 8, 2014 (Tentative)

CLTAC Call for Abstract Proposal

Dear CLTA colleagues,

We are happy to announce the publication of the December 2013 issue of the Journal of Technology and Chinese Language Teaching (ISSN: 1949-260X), which can be accessed freely at http://www.tclt.us/journal/. Its table of contents and the editorial board of JTCLT are included below for your reference.

Please feel free to contact the Journal at editor@tclt.us if you’d like to make a contribution. The guidelines for manuscript submission can be found at http://tclt.us/journal/authors.php.

Have a great and wonderful new year of 2014!

JTCLT editors

Two important announcements from incoming CLTA President Prof. Hongyin Tao and the Board of Directors concerning the CLTA Annual Meeting for 2014:

             1) We will continue to host the official CLTA annual conference with ACTFL. In 2014, it will be in San Antonio, Texas, on Nov. 21-23, 2014. For this, I ask that you submit your  proposal through the ACTFL website. As a reminder, the deadline for ACTFL proposals is January 15, 2014. For more information, visit the ACTFL convention website at:  http://www.actfl.org/2014convention-expo.

2) With ACTFL’s understanding, CLTA will host a smaller scale event to address our need to reach out to the regional association members. The CLTA meeting on October 25-26, 2014 will be a one and half day event at  Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. It will be called the First CLTA International Symposium on Chinese Language Teaching and Learning. More information about the symposium will be available on the CLTA website at: https://www.clta-us.org.

The CLTA Annual Meeting Program has received an update with corrections and revisions. Download the 11/10 revision from the Meeting page.