The WLC Department gathers visiting language lecturers from all over the world. Ms. Wang believes that openess, high emotional intelligence, and cross-cultural communication are keys to the success of language teaching. Applying the Salad Bowl Theory is the ideal way to foster highly effective teamwork and to respect and integrate different identities and cultures. Nurting a sense of independence is also important.
Chinese Classes at college level in the University of Scranton are different from those in Taiwan. In the university, teacher-student relationship is more like friends, however it is still crucial for teacher’s to maintain their authority. Having small talks with students can increase students’ learning motivation. While designing a Chinese lesson plan, a student-center approach must be considered. However, one of the difficulties while teaching Chinese in the class is how to apply authentic Chinese cultural knowledges in to real-life scenarios.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the University of Scranton has switched its model to remote learing in 2020. Luckily, there are a great variety of resources such as ACTFL, Chinese Language Teachers Association, and STARTALK programs. Despite this challenging outbreak, Ms. Wang was able to receive one pedagogy grant from ACTFL-SIG and joined more than ten teaching development training sessions which were very beneficial to teaching Chinese remotely in 2020.
Ms. Wang is very thankful for the support from the Education Division of Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in New York. The world-renowned Chinese-language program sponsored by the Ministry of Education has enhanced Ms. Wangs’ linguistically-diverse environment. The experience allows Ms. Wang to explore technology-based methodologies of how to facilitate Chinese language teaching effectively. Ms. Wang considers she is very fortunate to receive awards that have played an important role in shaping her profession and these experiences also motivate her to further contribute to Chinese language teaching in the future.