AbstractTCLT3

Abstracts

Authoring Tools for On-line Exercises

Tianwei Xie

California State University, Long Beach

Language teachers need good authoring tools to create drills, exercises and tests/exams. Many online authoring tools are currently available. Each has its own advantages and weaknesses. This workshop will review some authoring tools and propose some criteria for selecting authoring tools. The participants will have hands-on practice in the workshop.

Participants' skills are assumed: Chinese typing, ability to surf the Internet.

OWLS Templates for Creating Web-based Exercises

Konrad Lawson and C.P. Sobelman

Columbia University

There are an increasing number of choices for language instructors to get their materials online. This provides students with opportunities to continue their study outside of the classroom. At this workshop we will introduce instructors to one such solution, the free and open source software OWLS (OWLS workshop for language study). This software uses a template system that allows instructors to post readings, sound files, and glossaries online, as well as create interactive exercises in the form of tone review exercises, multiple choices, fill in the blank, and word matching exercises.

This free software is user-friendly, specially designed for language teachers who do not have special training in technical skills for web-building. Exercises can be created with only one or two steps, and they can be edited later to correct mistakes. Instructors can easily transfer their existing text from a Word file to the templates (copy/paste) and backup files from the finished exercises on the templates. The software allows instructors to post both static content (readings, a picture, sound files, and glossaries) as well as interactive exercises.

During this hands-on workshop, instructors will be given the opportunity to:

1. Practice creating an online glossary (which can be reviewed as flashcards)

2. Upload a media file

3. Post a reading assignment

4. Create an interactive exercise and practice editing it for mistakes

5. Finally, these will be combined by creating a reading which has a media file, glossary, and multiple-choice exercise all attached.

Participants are encouraged to bring their own teaching materials for practice.

PowerPointing: Creating Slides for Teaching Activities

Ling Mu, Yale University

Phyllis Zhang, Columbia University

MS PowerPoint (PPT), a robust tool for creating powerful presentations, can also be used to create effective teaching/learning activities. Many PPT features, such as multimedia capabilities, animation, narration, and templates, among others, allow language teachers more possibilities to explore with their teaching. A great advantage of this popular tool is that PPT is easy to learn and use, without any complexity that is often associated with multimedia tools.

In this workshop session we will focus on some PPT features that help create various interactive activities: e.g. activities with vocabulary glossary, sentence forms (words and sentences, blank-filling or word-matching), contents (text reading and discussion, listening/viewing), productive skills (sentence- and paragraph-building), and culture exposure (slideshows with narration). Participants will learn the techniques to perform common tasks, such as converting a list of vocabulary or a paragraph of text into slides, working efficiently by creating templates for repeated jobs, presenting information or generating interactive activity through integration of text, sound, and images (or video clips). Participants will also learn how to incorporate into PPT slides external programs such as a Word document, a web site, or a media player (for audio or video presentations).

Preparing Multimedia Materials for Web and Classroom Activities

Phyllis Zhang

Columbia University

This workshop teaches some basic techniques for preparing images, audio and/or video clips for PowerPoint slideshows or web-based exercises. Participants will learn the basics of the following tasks through hands-on exercises:

1. Preparing Audio Files: Using the System Recorder (PC) and MusicMatch to record and play an audio clip via the computer, converting formats (e.g. WAV, MP3),

2. Inserting Audio and Video Files: Inserting media contents into a PowerPoint slide or a web page by creating a link or by embedding media clips.

3. Preparing Image Files: Preparing images for PPT slideshows, video, or instructional manual.

DVD-movies and Chinese Language Interface Templates

De Bao Xu

Hamilton College, New York

It's been a dream for language teachers to incorporate DVD into their instructions. Fortunately, Hamilton Templates (cross-platform) developed by De Bao Xu and Hong Gang Jin (1999-2004) has made this dream become true: Not only presentation/illustration controlling the playback of DVD video is available, so is the playback controlling the presentation/illustration. The updated Hamilton Templates allows the teachers to freely link DVD video and texts, DVD video and sound, and DVD video and designed instructions and exercises. Audio recording is also available for both instructors and students. The output of the Templates will be a standalone program, which can be used either in a language lab or in a classroom, and is ideal for movie instructions and studies. This session of the workshops will teach the participants (1) how to use this software to create DVD-based instructions and exercises, and (2) how to convert the output of the software to a standalone program.

Participants' skills are assumed: Chinese typing, familair with basic computer commands.

A Framework for the Design of Computer-assisted Vocabulary Learning (CAVL) Programs for Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL)

Michelle Hsu-McWilliam

Edinburgh University, UK

Some of the key issues concerning the design of CAVL programmes for CFL learning, based on a review of the psycholinguistic literature, are as follows:

1. What can computers offer that written materials cannot?

2. How can the learning process be facilitated without becoming a language test in the aspect of exercises/activities?

3. How should the programme design be adapted to the characteristics of the Chinese writing system? How can the programme develop the learners' awareness of the characteristics of the Chinese writing system in order to accelerate learning?

4. How does 'frequency' affect the speed of vocabulary acquisition? How effective is 'incidental vocabulary acquisition' through the reading of texts?

5. What types of gloss lead to most effective memory retention? What is the effect of a self-created database/dictionary on the vocabulary acquisition of individual learners?

6. What programme adaptation is required to accommodate different learning styles (e.g. predominantly visual or verbal learners)? How does 'audio' influence vocabulary acquisition?

7. How best to design feedback for different purposes?

The presentation will conclude with a number of recommendations for improvement of the design of CAVL for CFL.

ChineseTA

Chengzhi Chu

Stanford University, USA

ChineseTA is an integrated computer software program designed to assist Chinese teachers in the creation, adjustment, and evaluation of their teaching materials to adapt to the needs of their students. With an easy-to-use computer interface, it automatically and accurately completes many tasks involved in the preparation of instructional materials. Adding pinyin to characters, generating character/word lists, indexing word/character distribution, supplying simplified and traditional character contrast, reporting frequency of word/character usage, are only a few examples of the many tasks that can be performed by the ChineseTA program. ChineseTA not only saves time for Chinese teachers, but also helps them improve the quality of their teaching materials in many ways. An earlier version of this software was demoed at the CLTA 2003 annual conference. At this meeting I will introduce certain details and some enhanced functions of this software. Further, I will discuss how this software can help improve our curriculum designs.

Integrating e-learning into Chinese language courses

Tzu-hsiu Chiu

University of Alberta, Canada

The presentation will share the strategies, results, and significance of my research on integrating e-learning into Chinese language courses. The subjects are students of the University of Alberta's Chinese as a Second Language Program. The subjects range from beginning (101) to intermediate (301) levels, based on my teaching experience in the University of Alberta from September 1, 2003 to April 30, 2004. The curricula are student-centered with a focus on effective communication and cross-cultural understanding. The major concern is the guidance of student use of lab facilities and Internet resources for passively review, as well as actual use of the second language for specific objectives. The research is designed to compare student application, performance, and feedback during two terms: one term without e-learning, and one term with e-learning integrated into the existing audio-aid language programs. The use of e-learning is defined by the courses posted and communicated through the WebCT and Wimba. Language courses available at UA focus on maximizing the second language acquisition. It is also implemented with Internet research assignments required for students to read authentic materials or have direct contact with selected groups from China or Taiwan for real communication and cross-cultural understanding.

Publishing interactive quizzes with Macromedia Flash MX 2004

John Chang

University of Southern California, USA

The quiz templates in Macromedia Flash MX 2004 have been enhanced with a more streamlined process to develop interactive contents. Although it is template-driven, the modular design behind the templates allows for maximum customization, which should appeal to both novice and experienced developers. This presentation demonstrates how to modify the quiz templates in Macromedia Flash MX 2004 to create interactive quizzes. Specifically, it shows how to accomplish the following tasks in designing quizzes using Macromedia Flash MX 2004:

1) Modify True and False, Fill in the Blank and Multiple Choice interactions

2) Add interactions to the Timeline

3) Deliver the contents: on-line and off-line

Software for Children to Learn Chinese Characters On-line in Hong Kong

Ho Cheong Lam

University of Hong Kong, China

Since the late eighties, the Dragonwise Team at the University of Hong Kong has designed and developed a variety of software products for children to learn Chinese characters. Our previous work focused on enhancing students' structural awareness of Chinese characters. Building on this, our recent software has evolved to consist of 1441 small learning objects, each of which provides a specific kind of interaction with one or several characters and can be flexibly used and combined with other existing instructional materials. More importantly, the design of these learning objects has specifically taken into consideration the learning experience of students, such as what kinds of errors the students usually make in learning to write the characters. This forms the basis of the design rationale of these learning objects. A whole series of learning objects has been developed and used to enhance the students' sensitivity to component configuration, stroke length, stroke clustering and morphology in Chinese orthography. All these learning objects are downloadable from www.dragonwise.hku.hk. Our main proposal is to base the design of instructional materials not only exclusively on the content to be taught, but also on how students actually go about learning the content.

Instructional Material Development at the Electronic Age

Hongchu Fu

Washington and Lee University, USA

Every language teacher used to have (and may still have) many teaching aids to help with instruction, whether to enhance oral/visual comprehension or to arouse student interest. With the rapid development of computers and electronics, and their increasing infiltration into the classrooms, there are more and more options for teachers in developing teaching aids. This paper tries to:

1) Sketch various new methods of exploring the electronic horizon

2) Point out certain a fruitful principle in instructional material development

3) Demonstrate a few teaching aids that I recently developed according to the principle. Among the tools of instructional material development available to teachers today are

a. Web and internet development whereby one can search for materials online and tailor them for one's own classroom use

b. Packaged theme/course development whereby one can digitize instructional materials for a course/theme into a CD/DVD or other electronic forms

c. An increasing amount of commercial products and software

d. Mini-programmable applications for instructional materials.

I have found the last category particularly useful and feasible for my purpose because it involves minimal amount of computer programming which makes such a project manageable to ordinary instructors. In designing the project however, one has to decide whether it should be course-specific or generic so that it can apply to other courses and projects. In my practice, I have found the latter more fruitful and of greater use. The last part of the paper is a demonstration of the two mini-applications I recently developed as teaching aids: Pinyin Conversion Module and Random Slide Show Module for Microsoft PowerPoint presentation, both of which can be generally used for any presentations.

Linguistic features of English on Chinese and English IRC

Susan Yuqin Zhao

Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand

This paper discussed some linguistic features of English on IRC that are found in both a Chinese chat room and an English native speaker's chat room. It also discussed some particular features in the Chinese chat room, which are specific to Chinese chatters only. Authentic utterances copied from two chat rooms, one from a Chinese web site and another from an English web site, were used as the data for the discussion. It was found that both the Chinese chat room and the native chat room share common linguistic features in aspects of abbreviation of words, less capitalization and less punctuation, non-verbal information and language play. It was also found that in the Chinese chat room, the chatters come to chat mainly for practicing English, but their use of English is strongly affected by their first language and is much less colloquial than the native speakers. Moreover, since English is listed as the topic in the chat room, and there is no special topic for chatters, it is hard for chatters to concentrate on one topic and keep the chatting coherent in content. Key words: IRC (internet related chat), CMC (computer-mediated communication), chat room, linguistic features

Teaching TV News with SMART Board

Patrick Lin

Defense Language Institute, USA

TV news is a valuable resource for intermediate and advanced students of Chinese to learn the language and culture. TV news covers various topics that are closely related to people's daily lives and contains formal language expressions that students need to learn. However, there are problems in teaching TV news in a traditional classroom. The news items in textbooks are often outdated since it usually takes many years to develop and publish a textbook. Textbooks are also not interactive. With SMART Board and available Internet technology, TV news can be taught in a more effective way. This presentation will first examine the value of TV news as a resource in teaching Chinese language and then demonstrate how to teach the current news with SMART Board. The presenter will share his ideas and experience with the audience on integrating listening, reading, writing, and speaking skills in the teaching of TV news.

Managing On-line Business Chinese Courses

Fangyuan Yuan

University of Pennsylvania, USA

To satisfy the individual learners' needs and optimize instructional effectiveness, a business Chinese website has been developed for the business Chinese courses at the University of Pennsylvania. This website includes course information, discussion board, weekly economic news posts, business background readings, pinyin and English translation of the texts, sample student work, placement tests, and different formats of exercises. In this presentation, I will illustrate how this website has been developed and utilized to supplement classroom teaching over the past three years. Focus will also be placed on the structure of the online exercises, e.g. how different types of exercises are connected to the backend database, how the scores are graded and displayed, and how the database is used for course management and for research purposes in Chinese pedagogy.

Software Program for Basic Spoken Chinese

Cornelius C. Kubler

Williams College, USA

Basic Spoken Chinese (BSC) is a new course under development that comprises 88 lessons, each involving a common daily life situation in which Americans typically find themselves when traveling, studying, or working in a Chinese-speaking region. While the course is based on situations, there is an underlying grammatical framework that introduces the major grammatical patterns of spoken Chinese as well as a core vocabulary of approximately 1,600 high-frequency words. In addition to a textbook, workbook, teacher's manual, and other supplementary materials, there is a video clip ranging in length from 30 seconds to two minutes available for each lesson. The video clip shows a dramatization of the dialog for each lesson, each of which consists of a conversation in Chinese between an American speaker and a Chinese speaker. The dialogs were all filmed on location in either Beijing or Taipei. The software program for BSC is designed to supplement the textbook and workbook. Director MX serves as the development tool for the program. In addition to the video clips, made with QuickTime, students have available a number of choices. First, they are able to choose from among four audio tracks: all speakers, Chinese speaker only, American speaker only, or mute. At any point during a dialog, one (or all) of the speakers can be muted. This feature allows students to "lip-sync" the lines of either speaker in preparation for memorization and performance of the dialog in class the next day. Students are also able to choose from among four different written transcriptions of the dialogs: traditional characters, simplified characters, Pinyin, and English translation. The particular type of transcription may be changed at any point during a lesson. For example, the user could switch between Pinyin and simplified characters with the click of a button. No matter which transcription is chosen, as a speaker in the video says her or his line, the corresponding line of the transcription is highlighted on the screen, to help students keep track of where they are in the dialog. Moreover, the user can playback any line of the dialog by merely clicking on that line of the transcription. Software development requires creative solutions to difficult problems. We have found that using Director MX and using it well differ vastly in complexity. The latter requires experimentation and frequent consultation with experts in instructional technology. In developing this program, the author worked closely with two of his students, Daniel Gerlanc and Daniel Nelson. Dialogs in Chinese require time-stamping, which provide Director with the information necessary to highlight lines in the dialog. A children's sing-along tape where the lyrics highlight as the song progresses is an example of time-stamping in action. The distribution format for the BSC software program still needs to be determined. This most likely will involve a choice between DVD and web delivery. Though numerous additions and improvements are under consideration, a website for BSC is already functional and has been used by students at Williams College for the past two years. This website may be accessed by anyone, from anywhere, at www.williams.edu/Asian/chinese

Interval Study and Technology in Flashcard Study

Konrad Lawson

Waseda University, Japan

My presentation will introduce two technological tools, of my own design, which can benefit students in their acquisition and, more importantly, continued recognition and memory of vocabulary in their language study. While flashcard study, and the rote memory it implies, is itself a very limited tool, it continues to be a common, if not dominating practice amongst language learners. My older Macintosh application "Flashcard Wizard" and my newer online site the "House Of Cards" effectively use technology to allow "interval study" which helps student efficiently use their time in reviewing vocabulary or other memory intensive materials. The "House of Cards" brings this to the online world but will also serve as a free and open repository of language glossaries for everyone to download or review directly online. During my talk I will demonstrate "interval study" and the new website, and will conclude with some suggestions concerning 1) the standardization of a flashcard format for sharing glossaries widely 2) the importance of a project like "House of Cards" to widely disseminate open source and free glossaries for language study to save time for students and instructors.

Personal Response System (PRS)

Lung-Hua Hu

Brown University, USA

Personal Response System is a classroom technology that allows instructors to collect immediate feedback from students. It uses a simple infrared technology similar to that of a TV remote control. Students have a personal cell-phone sized transmitter that bears a designated ID number. They use the keypad on the transmitter to answer multiple-choice questions posed either orally or in text. The results appear graphically when the preset time is met, and the distribution of choices is instantly displayed on screen, visible to everyone in the classroom. This device was first created by Physics professors and has been adopted mostly by science professors. They use PRS to take attendance, check students' understanding of lecture, give quizzes, and so on. I came across PRS last summer and was amazed at the interaction it generated among the audience. I used it in my Advanced Chinese class last semester and observed the following results:

a. 100% participation

b. Highly interactive classroom atmosphere

c. Non-stop discussions

d. Shyness no longer holding up some students (thanks to anonymous voting)

I propose that we explore the potential of applying this technology in our field.

Developing and Implementing the Standards-based Measurement of Proficiency (STAMP) for Chinese

Madeline Spring

University of Colorado, Boulder, USA

The Standards-based Measurement of Proficiency (STAMP) is an online assessment of proficiency. Consistent with ACTFL Guidelines and National Standards, it is an accessible, quick, and affordable way to assess all students' proficiency. STAMP is already used nationally to assess students in French, German, Japanese, and Spanish. I am currently working with the Center for Applied Second Language Studies at the University of Oregon and an advisory board of national experts to design a reading and writing STAMP for Chinese. This presentation will give an overview of the project, discuss the process used to develop and pilot the test, and give examples of the range of test items and how they are evaluated.

Using Writing Conferencing Software to Help Chinese Language Students' Writing

Hui-mei Justina Hsu

University of Illinois, USA

Chinese Writer is writing conferencing software designed to accommodate the needs of Chinese language students. This software has undergone two development iterations. The first version was programmed using Visual Basic 6.0. The software contains an execution file and includes basic file functions and word processor functions. Furthermore, there are functions unique to this software such as adding, viewing, modifying and deleting questions, answers, comments and revisions. Additionally, students and instructors can get an evaluative report about the interactions in the conferencing process. The second development iteration has been programmed in Visual Basic .Net. Instead of having the instructors and students pass files to each other as in the first iteration, the interaction is interfaced on the Web. The students' writings, questions and revisions, and instructors' comments are stored on the server. Writing conferences can be conducted asynchronously online between students and instructors. The second iteration is still in process and will be ready by the time for presentation. This presentation will describe the development of this virtual conferencing software project, introduce the functionalities and uniqueness of the software and provide some samples of how the software can be integrated into an intermediate Chinese language class.

Integrating Webpages into a Language and Culture Curriculum: Issues, Techniques, and Examples

Sue-mei Wu

Carnegie Mellon University, USA

When we utilize webpages in a language and culture curriculum, we do so with the hope that their use can enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of our instruction and students' learning experiences. However, creating a webpage involves significant resources and work, including content creation, programming, testing, etc. Because of the effort involved to create web pages, we would like to develop strategies to make them as flexible as possible. This paper will focus on how to design a webpage that can be integrated with several different courses in a Chinese curriculum in order to get the maximum return from the investment of time and resources necessary to create it. This presentation will first demonstrate several Chinese language and culture webpage projects that I am developing at Carnegie Mellon University. We will discuss the goals and motivations of each project, and demonstrate some sample modules from the webpages, including interactive and personalized online Chinese reading, writing, and culture components. Then we will use these webpages as examples to illustrate how to integrate online modules to meet various Chinese course needs. We will share our experience of integrating these webpages into our Chinese curriculum at CMU. It is hoped that this demonstration will show how webpages can be made flexible enough to contribute to the efficiency and effectiveness of instruction in several different Chinese courses.

Web-based Elementary Chinese Exercises

Yanhui Zhang

Carnegie Mellon University, USA

Chinese becoming a popular language, there is an impending need for the Chinese instruction to be more computerized. The Web-based Elementary Chinese Exercises are to follow the contents of CMU's newly compiled text-book. It aims to provide a variety of multimedia exercises to the Chinese students to help them to consolidate what they have learned in the class. It not only provides students with a diverse group of forms for practice and reinforcement of their language skills, but also helps to build the current elementary Chinese into a high-standard on-line program. The web-based Elementary Chinese Exercises will be written in Director, a prevailing CALL Authoring software. It covers listening comprehension, reading comprehension, and basic grammar exercises. In addition to the conventional classroom drill and practice, this on-line exercise will give students a chance to work and consolidate their language skills individually and in a self-monitored pace. The product will be in use as early as the Fall semester of 2004.

Using Electronic and Digital Images and Movies in Chinese Teaching and Learning

Ling Mu

ale University, USA

This presentation will demonstrate various ways of using electronic and digital images and movies in Chinese teaching and learning.

1. Dynamics of digital images and digital movies in teaching and their impact on teaching and learning

2. Electronic images: where to get them, how to use them, and what tools are needed for classroom use and for online use. I will introduce a recently completed Chinese Picture Dictionary

3. Short digital movies: usually 20-40 seconds long containing a meaningful dialog. How to use them in class and online; where to get these movies; and how to make them

4. What tools are needed to create and use electronic images and movies

The presentation will use a lot of illustrations in a hands-on manner. Hopefully, it will encourage more instructors to be involved in adopting these useful tools.

The Execution Experiences of Chinese Festivals, Customs and Cultures Courses in Web-based Instruction

Zhao-Min Shu

Graduate Institution of TCSL, Taiwan

This paper and presentation focus on discussing the interactive relationship between languages and cultures, and the importance of cultural teaching in language instruction. Technology Instruction has become a new way for people to influence one another. An Internet-based instruction system, with the functions of tutoring, exercise, testing and supervision, is convenient for learning at a distance, individual studies, and computer/internet-aided instruction. This paper covers both the concepts and practicality of the curriculum design and execution that I have undergone. I have experimented with a merge of cultural teaching into the CSL curriculum, using WBI as the teaching tool with teaching methods such as Situated Learning, Constructivism, Process-oriented Writing Teaching, Learning Community, and the like. Following the systematic instructional design, I organized and accomplished my cultural net-course, "Learning Chinese with Festivals and Customs", and partially developed another net-course, "Chinese Practical Writing" hosted by Prof. Hsin. After my pilot study of some units, I found this experiment not only promotes learners' Chinese reading and writing abilities as well as cultural cognition, but also makes me reconsider the "right" way and the cautions for the courses implementation. Based on some inspiration, I developed a more complete web-course model/template about TCSL and its Culture. Keywords: WBI, TCSL, Culture teaching, ID

Inducing Linguistic Schema Through Web-based Activities

Fang-yi Chao

University of Colorado, USA

In recent years, a significant amount of research has demonstrated that background knowledge plays a crucial role in second-language comprehension. Based on the Schema Theory (proposed by Carrell and Eisterhold 1983), there are two types of background knowledge structured in readers' or listeners' cognition and accessed in the process of comprehension, i.e., content schemata and formal schemata. Content schemata relates to one's background knowledge and expectations about the subject matters, while formal schemata associates with one's knowledge of the structures of the text. This paper concentrates on linguistic schema and surveys different ways of inducing structure schema. It proposes three principles for structuring advance organizers through web-based activities to induce linguistic schema, i.e.,

1) Ensuring that the activities direct learners to construct a correspondence between the schema activated and the actual linguistic structure in the message

2) Devising the activities within the relevant context

3) Designing activities that enhance background knowledge as well as input/exercise new information. Examples of Chinese web-based activities are given to demonstrate the procedures of inducing linguistic schema and their relevance to message comprehension.

A Case Study in a Blended Chinese Language Class

De Zhang

Iowa State University, USA

This presentation will introduce the research design and findings of a richly described interpretative case study investigating the use of online chat in a blended (online learning and face-to-face instruction) Chinese language class at college level for the heritage learners who commanded some conversational skills, but had limited literacy skills. Unlike the existing chat literature in language learning which is almost exclusively product-oriented and analyzing the chat logs, this case study aimed to seek insights into the understanding of the process of the students' chats and the allowances online chat provided to the learners. Four representatives of beginning level heritage learners (2 foreign born American Chinese, 1 American born Chinese, and 1 foreign born Chinese) participated in the study. The American Chinese participants in the study are all from Caucasian-dominated Midwest communities in the U.S. and almost did not receive any Chinese language instruction before taking this course. The participants' reflective journals, chat logs (both in Pinyin and characters), written assignments, taped interview transcripts as well as the researcher's observation notes were the data source. Several major themes have emerged from the data analysis. Discussions of the findings, along with the implications on teaching and future research, will be provided.

Design and Delivery of an Advanced Language Course for Chinese Heritage Learners in a Blended Environment

Aili Mu

Iowa State University, USA

This presentation has a two-fold purpose: 1) to provide our rationale for the design and delivery of an advanced beginning level language course for Chinese heritage learners in a blended environment of online learning and face-to-face instruction; 2) to demonstrate the accelerated learning process and enhanced learning outcome through technology integration. Our central argument is that blended learning promises much more than addressing the issues of time, location, different learning styles and paces, etc. Our experiments show that blended learning is a better learning mode for heritage learners because (1) it provides the environment for them to best take advantage of their previous knowledge of Chinese grammar and conversation skills; (2) the multimedia-assisted text-based online learning integrates different language skills and especially facilitates the development of the much needed literacy skills; (3) it makes peer interaction effective and individualized instruction a rosy reality; (4) it helps establish and develop learners' lifelong learning skills. Through our presentation of the blended learning environment, the activities conducted in the environment, and our analysis of students' output (reflective journals, online chats, online resource projects, quizzes and exams etc.), we will prove the above arguments.

Application of Multimedia Technology in Chinese Cultural Education

Wenhan Duan

Tianjin Nan Kai University, China

It is necessary for language learners to also learn about the culture and history of the country where that language is spoken as the native language. However, due to the limitation of the forms and content of many textbooks, it is difficult to provide particular introduction of a culture in a language textbook. The design and development of this courseware can help to solve this problem. The courseware is designed to provide wider and further illustration of the related culture in Chinese language education. The system also has the functions such as the "Dictionary of Chinese Culture" and "Chinese Language Learning Assistant." Design statement: Lecture and self-study are the major two ways of learning of this course. Although texts are the main source of learning, the interactive interface of the courseware combines many forms of presentation, including text, audio, picture, and video, such as audio dictionary, cultural background notes, pictures, video clips and so on. There are two ways of linking the courseware and the database. One is through the hyperlink buttons on the presentation pages, which are linked to the database. The other way is to set hyperlinks to the key words in the text and link them to the related database so as to provide supplementary explanations for the text. The Design of Hyperlinks: There are homepage and linked pages of this courseware. The text in the homepage is audio text. Keywords or buttons are designed with hyperlinks that are linked to prompts, dictionary, notes, pictures, videos, tables, and exercises. We use pop-down menus for different hyperlinks to provide further options for the students. Other pages are linked to the homepage by the keywords in the main text. The students can click the keywords in the text for the related database whenever needed; they can also click the buttons on the left of the homepage to use the database such as dictionary and background information. These buttons also have the functions of sorting and searching so as to provide more convenience for the students. The Characters of the Courseware: 1. With the use of multimedia technology, the courseware displays the knowledge of the Chinese culture in many interactive forms such as texts, pictures, videos, tables, audios, so as to make the learning more lively, direct and vivid than usual. Compared to the traditional textbooks, this courseware can not only provide further illustration of the related culture of Chinese language, but also give students more motivation in language learning and class participation. 2. This courseware provides many databases related to the Chinese culture such as texts, pictures, video, audio and tables. All these databases are linked through hyperlinks. 3. This courseware allows sufficient options and free space for the update of the database, so as to meet different needs of teachers of Chinese language at various levels. 4. This courseware is designed for the advanced learners of Chinese to use either in class or at home. It can also be used as a self-study tool for learners with certain Chinese background to learn about the Chinese culture.

Teaching Chinese Characters via Technology

Dongdong Chen

Seton Hall University, USA

Learning to read and write Chinese characters has been considered the most challenging tasks for English-speaking students of Chinese. For those who just start to taste the Chinese language, it can be too overwhelming to learn to recognize characters when they are struggling to pronounce words with accurate tones. Among many things, the fact that Chinese uses pinyin to transcribe sounds and no relationship exists between pinyin and characters, constitutes the problem. How an instructor approaches the problem may determine the success of the Chinese language teaching and learning. Intuitively, a workable solution towards the problem would hinge on helping learners make a right connection between pinyin and characters. This paper proposes an attempt to use computer technology to mediate the teaching and learning of characters so as to make the learning easy and enjoyable. Specifically, we teach characters by having students input characters directly using the Microsoft IME 3.0 for XP in a web-based Chinese-language learning program incorporated in Blackboard, a course management software package. The program provides students with a unique opportunity to practice pronouncing pinyin, recognizing and writing characters simultaneously. Through one semester's observation, we noticed that practicing in this way students' associations between pinyin and characters, between pinyin and English equivalents, and between characters and English meanings can be largely enhanced, which further facilitates the teaching and learning of the language. The paper will also discuss pros and cons of integrating modern technology into the traditional classroom teaching of the Chinese language.

The Wedding Banquet--Web-based interactive instruction for middle-level Chinese Learner

Huey-Ru Fann

Curry School of Education, USA

To stimulate learning appeal for middle-level-Chinese learners, and develop web-based instruction of exciting, innovative uses of multimedia technology via the movie of The Wedding Banquet. The middle level learner will have the basic knowledge of the vocabulary and grammar; however, there is a need to them to understand more of the reality of Chinese convention and society. According to Ang Lee's movie The Wedding Banquet, the project will build up the web-site to demonstrate the dialogs in the specific occasions, and some Chinese customs for the middle-level-learners. The web-site will include the video, context, quiz, grading (correction), grammar analysis, vocabulary notes, and tips; therefore, it is also designed to approach the needs of instructors' teaching. I. Pedagogical Aims of Project 1. Stimulation: Movies are a good, popular source of entertainment as well as a learning resource for the middle-level learners, so multimedia application can persuade learners to approach Chinese in an interesting way. 2. Practical: The dialog of the movie and the tips section contain important points about natural uses of the Chinese language and specific cultural points, so it's interesting to the learners too. 3.Interaction: Students can do the quiz section with interactive response. 4. Adaptation: Learners can adjust their path of learning via the web-based technology, like choosing non-subtitle, English subtitle, or Chinese subtitle, and repeat as many times as they want. 5. Evaluation: Not just the traditional context-approach, the quiz section is included, so users can evaluate their understanding after watching the movie clips.

Do You Moodle? An Introduction to Alternative Course Management Software for Educators

Steven Day

University of Colorado, Boulder, USA

This demonstration will first briefly introduce some basic features of Moodle Course Management Software (CMS), then explore possible applications of its various modules (Assignment, Appointment, Attendance, Calendar, Chat, Choice, Dialogue, Exercise, Forum, Glossary, Journal, Label, Quiz, Resources, Scheduler, Survey, and Workshop) for web course design. Similar in function to other CMS (WebCT and Blackboard), Moodle nevertheless offers several distinct advantages. It is free of charge (CMS licenses are increasingly expensive), extremely easy to set up and use, works on all platforms (requiring only PHP support and a database), and is open-source software that can be modified by users according to need. Most important, it is grounded in constructionist pedagogic principles, such as project-based learning or peer-to-peer discussions, and is being developed collaboratively by teachers rather than only technology experts (reflected in its topic-centered design, unlike other tool-centered CMS). Moodle will allow for totally integrated course website design, and is an extremely powerful tool to enhance extra-mural curriculum, foster student-student and student-instructor communication, provide prompt or immediate feedback, and facilitate computer-assisted language learning.

Developing Interactive Language Study Materials on the Web

Li-li Teng

Yale University, USA

This presentation intends to introduce the basic knowledge of XML and web editing. The presenter will show a sample program that allows language teachers to develop interactive course materials and lead discussions on the advantages and limits of this program. Designs of listening exercise and vocabulary drills for an advanced lesson used in the third-year Chinese course at Yale University will be shown for discussion on the role of computer technology in some pedagogical issues.

Animated Interactive Web Exercises for Learning Reinforcement at Beginning Levels

Pao-Yuan Chen

Columbia University, USA

When teaching Chinese at beginning levels, one frequently encounters the following problems: insufficient classroom time for reviewing and consolidating the grammatical structures being taught, lack of non text-based on-line activities to support student practice outside of class, and lack of exercises that will help beginning students move their discourse abilities from sentence-level to paragraph-level. Since the computer has become a major tool in learning and web accessibility is prevalent, on-line activities (especially interactive ones) should be productively employed. This presentation will explore on-line interactive animations that have proved very helpful to this instructor at Columbia University with respect to consolidating and reinforcing target grammatical structures, allowing students to integrate the target structures into use at their own convenience and pace, and helping to motivate students' learning interest, all to help the students with the primary productive abilities -- speaking and writing. At Columbia, this instructor's web-based interactive animation tools are used to help students move up from single sentence usage (normally accomplished in the classroom) to the more contextual and useful paragraph level of usage. Animation tools are also used to reinforce different grammatical structures. Examples given will show how an animation tool designed for the 'new situation &endash;le' could also be used for complement of degree. Students' resultant writing samples will also be demonstrated.

Vocabulary Database of Chinese Language Textbooks and Web-based Vocabulary Builder

Song Jiang

University of Hawaii, USA

Vocabulary is central to language and of critical importance to foreign language learner. As one of the fundamental building blocks of language, vocabulary knowledge plays a prominent role in foreign language learning. How to introduce new vocabulary and how to help student master the vocabulary are of every language teacher's concern. However, teachers are often frustrated that vocabulary building in textbooks is limited to memorization of individual words and lacks diversified exercises and practices. This talk will report an on-going project, Chinese Web-based Vocabulary Builder, which aims at facilitating users and teachers of various textbooks in vocabulary learning and teaching. In the beginning phase of this project, a database containing vocabularies from seven commonly used Chinese textbooks in the U.S., namely, Integrated Chinese (I), Practical Chinese Reader (I, II), New Practical Chinese Reader (I, II), Chinese Primer, Hanyu (for beginning student), Practical Audio-Visual Chinese (I), Interactions (I&II), Communicating in Chinese, and Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (HSK) level I vocabulary, is established. Statistical analyses on data such as word comparison, cross-reference, frequency, etc. are conducted. These analyses provide answers to such questions as, how many words are included in commonly used beginning Chinese textbooks? how many of these words are in common and what are they? how are they differently organized and presented in each textbook? and, how may learners' proficiency be affected by divergent vocabulary coverage in different textbooks?. Based on the database and analyses, a website that hosts the "Web-based Vocabulary Builder" was created. The features of this website include automatic display of the vocabulary covered in the eight publications; electronic flashcard; animated stroke order tutorial; vocabulary dictation; listening drills; bi-directional quiz and test; recommended study lists according to the word frequency in these publications; learning a word with its associated words; study management tool; user designed self study; error analyses; notepad; bulletin board; chartroom, etc. The intended users of this website are: users of these seven textbooks; learners who prefer to study vocabulary by frequency, learners who want to systematically review or reinforce learned words; test takers who are preparing for HSK, and other various language proficiency tests, etc. Furthermore, this website is also intended to provide a channel for communication and exchange of learning and teaching experiences for both learners and educators.

Developing Digital Instructional Materials Using AuthorMax

Ming Feng

Seattle University, USA

As Chinese is increasingly chosen as a foreign language for college and university students, the audience in the Chinese class is no longer a small group of "elite" language learners who seem to be almost always self-motivated, goal-oriented, and often having various levels of innate linguistic ability that "clicks" when processing a foreign language. Heines (2000) mentioned that, "good students will learn regardless of the instructional techniques employed. Poor students, however, É might show marked differences in performance when something like a course Web site [or computer technology in general for that matter &endash; author's note] is made available as an enhancement to traditional classroom instruction." As students vary in their academic status, professional needs, purposes of studying, learning styles, and physical and psychological readiness, so too must the instructional materials vary to accommodate those characteristics. Such a variation among students will become an increasingly important issue for the field of teaching Chinese as a foreign language to address as it maturates. This paper will introduce the development of a digital instructional courseware application using AuthorMax. With a brief introduction to AuthorMax in terms of its target users, learning curves, and functions, the paper focuses on the courseware created by the author as a supplement to classroom instruction. The courseware can also be used as a self-training or assessment tool, especially for those who use one of the widely adopted textbooks on the market today in North America. The courseware contains twelve lessons that can be used both in and outside class. Each lesson includes audio, video and text files which can be utilized to practice at the level of words, sentences and context-based dialogues and passages. All lessons are introduced through an integrated format: multiple choices, close tests, audio flashcards, word and sentence translation, pronunciation practice, dictation tests and grammar notes. Instructors and students looking to reinforce their teaching and learning of the fundamental knowledge of grammar and language use will find a great value in the designing of a range of interactive tasks based on otherwise a series of static texts in the original textbook. Finally, the paper will also discuss the unique place of the courseware in a jungle of courseware applications today as well as how it should be utilized.

Peer Evaluation of Chinese Web-based Materials

Kylie Hsu

California State University, Los Angeles, USA

This paper presents peer evaluation of web-based Chinese language teaching materials through MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching). MERLOT is a multidisciplinary database supported by over twenty systems/institutions of higher education in the U.S. and Canada. Its purpose is to ensure the quality of online/multimedia materials for higher education by collecting and reviewing existing materials on the web. As a member of the MERLOT World Languages Editorial Board, I collaborate with other board members to set up the following criteria for evaluating language teaching materials, including Chinese: (1) overall content, (2) potential effectiveness as a teaching tool, and (3) ease of use/navigation. Peer-reviewed teaching modules in MERLOT can be searched by author, topic, date, and rating. For each module, MERLOT creates a profile page which consists of related information such as a brief description of the module, its teaching goal, target students, prerequisite knowledge or skill for using the module, technical requirements, etc. Instructors can freely use the peer-reviewed modules to supplement their teaching. They can also add their own assignments to the modules for their students. MERLOT enables instructors to incorporate high quality web resources into their classes without "reinventing the wheel," hence reducing their time and workload in teaching language with technology. Last, but not least, MERLOT promotes an online community of educators who have an expertise in language pedagogy and a keen interest in the use of technology-mediated materials for teaching Chinese language and culture.

Building Fluency: Exploring Tools for Production-Oriented Activities

Phyllis Zhang

Columbia University. USA

Teaching productive skills has always been a challenge to language educators. While technology opens up a new horizon for us to adapt a more holistic approach to language instruction through multi-sensory and multimedia tools, it enables instructors to create more learner-friendly environments for day-to-day teaching activities. This presentation will discuss various ways of using digital tools to stimulate quality production as well as to enrich classroom activity. It will demonstrate how the common programs such as PowerPoint Slides and Flash Movies can create visually stimulating activities that effectively motivate production as well as help build the learner's fluency and accuracy. The presentation will conclude that this multi-sensory approach incorporating text, sound, and images and videos effectively promotes language acquisition and retention. This demonstration will focus on the following computer-assisted activities generated by PowerPoint slides and Flash movies:

¥ Form-Focused Drills/Exercises: Working on accuracy and fluency via exercises such as choice of words, grammar, and phrase and sentence patterns.

¥ Vocab. Builder with a Cultural Component: Building a list of vocabulary of a particular theme/topic through a slideshow of cultural content.

¥ Sentence Cluster Builder: Eliciting extended sentences or short paragraphs using animated text and/or images.

¥ Dialog Builder: Using image sequence or short video to practice interactive skills and build spontaneous responses with fluency in conversation and dialog.

¥ Story Builder: Using image sequence or short video to generate storytelling activities.

¥ Input-to-Output Games: Using a game format to generate interactive activities, and to elicit extended discourse.

Versatile Online Digital Chinese Study Course at NTNU, Taiwan

Tess Fang

National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan

Designed by National Taiwan Normal University's Center for Chinese Language and Culture Studies for individuals studying Mandarin Chinese as a second language, Versatile Online Digital Chinese Study Course consists of the following three distinctive features&emdash;

1.To ensure the reusability and practical application of the Course to a variety of purposes, an object-oriented approach is being used to design and produce the Course based on instruction design and information mapping concepts and theories.

2.To facilitate student understanding, the Course employs a variety of mediums to teach vocabulary, listening comprehension, reading, and sentence patterns.

3.In order to encourage student learning motivation, the Course uses rich interaction in conjunction with a variety of activities, such as "office hour," Q & A time, small group discussion, and large group discussion, in its virtual classroom design to increase interaction between teacher and student as well as among students. This paper has four main sections: 1) a brief introduction, 2) a probe into course arrangement and design, 3) a summary of the results of implementing the course and difficulties/problems encountered, and 4) recommendations and regarding future developments of online digital Chinese study course and ways to improve it.

Issues on Automatic Annotation

Zheng-Sheng Zhang

San Diego State University, USA

Automatic annotation of Chinese text is a tremendously helpful tool for learners and teachers alike. For the student, it can speed-up and hence, encourage the reading of more advanced and authentic materials; for the teacher, it can greatly simplify the preparation of textbooks and supplementary materials. Using the example of Erik Peterson's Automatic Annotator hosted at San Diego State University, we will demonstrate the various functions of the program and their pedagogical applications. There are however difficulties with annotating Chinese text automatically. We will enumerate these problems, including those of segmentation and the multiple meanings of the same item. The problems will then be analyzed and evaluated in terms of how solvable they are without programming expertise. Although some problems pose challenges for state of the art intelligent language processing, other problems are more solvable given more time and effort. While not attempting to solve the problems on a theoretical level, practical suggestions will be made to alleviate some of the problems, which will render the program more useable.

How to Use Web-based and Interactive Television Technology to Enhance the Curriculum for Advanced Chinese

Jianhua Bai

Kenyon College, USA

This presentation is on how Kenyon and Denison, two liberal arts colleges, use web-based and Interactive television technology for enhancing their curriculum of advanced Chinese. The first part deals with the three integral components of the distance learning course of advanced Chinese: 1) The pre-class tasks with the conventional materials and materials on the web that engage and help students in reading the assigned readings. 2) The during-class TV conferencing lectures and activities that allow students to practice listening and speaking skills and increase their knowledge about aspects of Chinese culture and society. 3) The post-class tasks that reinforce and assess learning outcome through the conventional paper-pencil exercises and the use of web-based threaded discussions, reports and individualized distance learning TA sessions. The second part is a discussion of some of the guidelines and coping-strategies for the design and implementation of the distance-learning course. Topics addressed will include: how to restructure the conventional course? How to design and write/select the course materials and some of the student-centered interactive exercises, put them on my web page, and then work out a scheme for grading and assessment? How to help students use on-line annotators of Chinese? How to deliver course materials of Chinese characters via Internet? How to make best use of the class time getting students from the distance engaged in interacting with the faculty member and students from the other campus? My emphasis will be that the key word for successful integration of technology into our curriculum is "problem-solving", i.e. what specific pedagogical problem the computer technology can help solve and where it fits meaningfully and effectively into our curriculum.

Toward Designing Technology-based Instructional Materials That Work

Der-lin Chao

Hunter College, USA

In many conferences on teaching and technology we are often introduced to new instructional materials seeking new ways to enhance the teaching and learning of languages. Rarely do we hear the presenters talk about the blood and sweat they put into their projects, what mistakes they made and what lessons they learned, how their projects developed and how they plan to interest other teachers in their work. In this presentation, I will talk about what is involved in designing technology-based language instruction materials. I will also discuss learning theories, second language acquisition theories, and Chinese language research that has contributed to the development of technology-based instructional materials. It is important to set criteria to determine the best form and use of technology that would supplement the teaching and learning of course content most effectively. The presentation will draw from my own experience in designing the Web-based Chinese Literacy Development Project.

Web-based Tone Instruction with Multimedia: Graphing Tones through Musical Notation

Yihsiu Chen & Jinxi Lin

National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan

Difficulties in mastering the pronunciation of Chinese exist for Chinese language learners from beginning level to advanced, specifically in the distinguishing of different tones, the production of tones within the correct tonal range, and the rise and fall of each tone. Based on the theory of experimental phonetics of Chinese tones, this study makes use of web-based learning, auxiliary instruction, and multimedia tools to design a website that effectively teaches tones to Chinese learners. William Woo (1976) and Zhuchuan (1999) have previously published papers in the area of teaching Chinese tones. Woo suggests that Chinese tones closely resemble musical notation and that the four tone system cannot adequately describe the range of tones required to pronounce Chinese. Zhuchuan makes further progress by applying the results of experimental phonetics to teaching. In his study, all possible combinations of paired tones are measured with a gauge designed for graphing pitches and are then visually depicted as lines and curves on staves. The above studies have the potential to make contributions to practical instruction, but must be developed further. This project aims to overcome the difficulties they encountered and to develop a method of tone instruction that adapts musical notation to depict Chinese tones more precisely than the four-tone system does, and to facilitate learning. This project utilizes multimedia techniques to develop a model for the Chinese tone system comprising instructional sequences both for single characters and for dual characters. The website also includes lessons for learners of different language backgrounds that address their individual needs. This project follows the ASSURE model. Before using the website, students take a pre-test designed to record and evaluate a speaker's tones. Students receive brief instruction in independent use of the website and then are able to utilize it on their own. Afterwards, post-tests are administered to evaluate the progress they make. Key words: Web-based Instruction, tones, Chinese Teaching, Multimedia, Instruction Design

A Glimpse of Culture Revolution

Tong Chen

MIT, USA

This project is designed to provide students with relatively accessible information about lives of ordinary people that they can use as the base of small-scale studies for writing or visual projects. This project is currently implemented as a web site for internal MIT use. Simultaneously, the project is also being ported to the MetaMedia framework so that students can make use of the flexibility of reconfiguring, sharing, and annotating media documents. A Glimpse of Cultural Revolution is a visually rich web-based project that supplements and enriches regular textbook materials for intermediate Chinese courses. It contains several hours of videotaped interviews with residents of Tianjin who experienced the Cultural Revolution in different roles and locations, and how they deal with the period from today's perspective. Current and historical visual materials and descriptive texts provide the necessary background information for the interviews. The web-based interface allows students to listen to the interviewees describe their experiences in the Cultural Revolution, hometown, background, and current lives. Students hear first-hand accounts by these people who represent various walks of life and levels of society and what they went through during some of the social and political upheavals which characterize recent Chinese history, which account for so many of the attitudes prevalent among the Chinese today. The interviews help students to expand their listening skills while also using the web site as a source of focused information that they can draw upon and use to prepare written and oral presentations.

A New Model Of Chinese Teaching&emdash;"Great Wall Chinese" and Its Design Approach

Xuemei Zhao

Beijing Language and Culture University, China

The teaching mode of "Great Wall Chinese" focuses on modern practical Chinese and communicative Chinese. It aims to be a totally new Chinese teaching mode that is highly effective, scientific and systematic. This mode proceeds from a completely new language teaching concept. It takes the theory of task based Chinese instruction and the language teaching research with the limited study goal as its theoretical foundation. Its basic design principle is communication, individualization, information, openness, combination and standardization. The mode also takes the combination of the network multi- medium technology and the face-to-face teaching form as its teaching means. This paper is to explain comprehensively the following design approaches: the development goal, theoretical importance, design principle, major characteristics, object location, study style and the major content of the teaching mode etc.

Computer-assisted Chinese Language Teaching in China-Current Situation and Future

Yipeng Shao

National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language, China

This article introduces the development and perspective of modern educational techniques based on computers in teaching Chinese as a foreign language in mainland of China. Several questions related to multimedia and network courseware programs are discussed. The author states that methods of inducting modern educational techniques to language teaching are one of the most important research categories in pedagogical psychology.

Multimedia Effects and Chinese Character Processing: An Empirical Study of CFL Learners from Three Different Orthographic Backgrounds

Hong Gang Jin

Hamilton College, New York

The present study reports the findings concerning the effects of multimedia presentation, orthography, and processing experience on Chinese character recognition. One hundred twenty university students who were CFL learners from mainly three orthographic backgrounds participated in the study. The subjects' first languages include European languages such as English and German, East Asian Languages such as Japanese and Korean, and South Asian languages such as Thai, Indonesian, and Vietnamese. All subjects performed a recall task on 36 Chinese characters displayed on a computer with three types of multimedia presentations, focusing on word formation rules (radicals), character stroke sequences, and pronunciation (Pinyin). The results indicate that participants who

worked with the radical presentation performed best, and the performance of those who worked with the stroke presentation was in turn better than those working with the Pinyin presentation. The experiment found that in addition to effective multimedia, three critical factors contribute to the success of Chinese character recognition: (a) L2 processing strategies which are different from L1, (b) ovall L2 linguistic knowledge, especially orthographic knowledge of Chinese radicals and strokes, and finally (c) metalinguistic awareness, i.e. sensitivity to orthographic regularity.

China-U.S. Web-course Cooperation, Design, and Textbooks' Compilation

Songhao Liu

Beijing University, China

1 Brief introduction to ELLS and ELLS Chinese courseware

2 The position of text in ELLS

3 Some issues about the text for ELLS Chinese:

the compiling challenges are extraordinary difficult to face

the quality control is a long and harsh process

the result are innovative and exquisite texts (stories)

4 The implications for textbook compiling for Chinese as a second language

Distance Learning with Individualized Features-Analysis of the Materials at the On-line College of Chinese Language in China

Jianmin Zhang

East China Normal University, China

Online Chinese learning courses have features different from those of the traditional classroom. To meet the requirements of personalized learning, the website shall display diversity in terms of both teaching and learning during the operation, which can be considered from the perspective of teaching form, learning activities, teaching media and learning background. Attention shall also be paid to the coordination between diversity and specialization, embodying the characteristics of Chinese learning to full. The teaching website under the Online College of Chinese Language (http://www.hanyu.com.cn) has noticed the above-mentioned needs, applying various forms such as E-class_Webcast_Instant Message, etc. to integrate the Chinese teaching activities in the traditional classroom with modern education technologies. As students from all over the world use the website, the courseware is designed in a plate form therefore, to realize personalized Chinese learning, creating an environment suitable for online Chinese teaching.

An Internet-based Chinese Speaking Text for Placement Purpose

Tao Lin

Columbia University, USA

Many language programs use placement tests to measure students' language ability in order to put them in the levels appropriate to their language needs or deficiencies. However, no placement test can be truly accurate without a speaking test. Since the traditional interview-style speaking test requires a lot of human, material and time resources for administration and scoring, I designed this Internet-based/computer-based system for a speaking test for placement purposes. The system has the following features: Operation: Test takers can access the prompt and finish the whole test on a computer which is connected to a test database. The database is constructed on a local network (LAN), for example, a language lab or campus network, or on the Internet.

Test Process:

1. The prompt will be shown in words on the computer screen, accompanied by audio-visual stimuli.

2. After reading and listening to each prompt, the test takers will have a short period of time to prepare their answers.

3. After the preparation time, the test takers will record their answers to the computer within the limited time, which is indicated by a timing bar on the computer screen.

Rating:

1. The recordings will be saved on the database in two ways: under each test taker's name or ID number and under each question number.

2. Raters will rate the answers based on an analytical rubric which looks at several constructs of the test takers' language ability, for example: pragmatics, grammar, discourse, task fulfillment, and so on.

3. Raters can access to the answers at different times or locations and save their rating scores on the database.

4. Each rater can rate the same construct of different questions, e.g., grammar, vocabulary, or organization. They can also rate the answers of the same questions by different test takers, e.g., the answers of Question 5 by all the test takers or a group.

5. The scores will be computed according to constructs, questions, and in total.

6. When the rating is finished, the test takers can log on to the web and check their test results.

Besides placement tests, the system can also be used for many other purposes, such as for a diagnostic test, or an achievement test such as a quiz, mid-term, or final oral test. The content of the test can be changed or updated according to different needs.

A Call for an Online Chinese Pedagogical Reference Grammar

Baozhang He

College of the Holy Cross

Considering the facts that the number of students who are learning the Chinese language in this country, as well as in the world, has been increasing dramatically, and a systematic and user friendly reference grammar specially designed for English speakers of both the learners and teachers is in nonexistence, this presentation put forth a call for an Online Chinese Pedagogical Reference Grammar that is in urgent need.

In this talk, I will discuss some issues concerning both the web design and principles of grammar presentations. The purpose of this talk is to generate a discussion on the feasibility of such a project, and hopefully with the collaboration of the colleagues we can have such an online reference grammar to benefit the field of Chinese language learning and teaching in this country.

A prototype version of an Online Chinese Pedagogical Reference Grammar can be found at;

http://www.holycross.edu/departments/mll/bhe/grammar/

Reorganization and Application of On-line Resources

Tianwei Xie

California State University, Long Beach

The Internet has brought to the virtual world a great deal of information. Information explosion is not a fantasy, but a reality. A large number of teaching materials and data are appearing in the Internet. They are very helpful for Chinese language teaching and learning. However, Chinese language instructors may also be puzzled and feel helpless in dealing with the great amount of resources. This article attempts to propose some solutions. It analyzes the current situation, the categorization issue and characteristics of the Internet resources for learning Chinese. It discusses the principles and methods of reorganization and application of resources.

Adapting the Past, Facing the Future-An Overview of the Development of Multimedia Chinese Language Teaching

De Bao Xu, Hamilton College, New York

This study examines the development of Multimedia Chinese Language Teaching over the past four decades. It shows that the development can be divided into three stages with respect to the available technology, created software and computer programs and their impact on Chinese Language Teaching , and CALL studies at each stage. The three stages are:

1. Stage of Initiation (1970-1985)

2. Beginning of Development (1985-1993)

3. Full Development (1993-2004)

The purpose of the study is two-fold, (1) to review the development of Multimedia Chinese Language Teaching over the past four decades, and (2) to forecast the future in this rapidly developing field.