Chinese language graduate students earn national honors and spotlight

University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
Contact:
Song Jiang, (808) 956-2087
Assistant Professor, Chinese, East Asian Languages & Literatures
Posted: Dec 7, 2016

Xue Xia, Shou-hsin Teng (Chungyuan Christian University, Taiwan) and Helen Shen (University of Iowa).
Xue Xia, Shou-hsin Teng (Chungyuan Christian University, Taiwan) and Helen Shen (University of Iowa).
Professor Ted Yao’s wife, Mrs. Kuang-tien Chang Yao, and Liulin Zhang (photos by S. Jiang).
Professor Ted Yao’s wife, Mrs. Kuang-tien Chang Yao, and Liulin Zhang (photos by S. Jiang).

Three Chinese language graduate students from the Chinese section of the Department of East Asian Languages & Literatures received national recognition at the November 2016 American Council of Teaching Foreign Languages (ACTFL) convention and Chinese Language Teachers Association (CLTA) annual meeting.  PhD students Xue Xia and Liulin Zhang received prestigious awards for their work on Chinese language teaching.  Master’s student Xi Yang presented a paper at the event.

Xue Xia, who presented "Assessing L2 Interactional Competence in Paired Speaking Tasks," was selected from nine contestants nationwide to receive the 2016 Cheng & Tsui Professional Development Award for Teachers of Chinese.  Established in 2000, the award is given to support attendance of pre-collegiate and collegiate teachers at training workshops, seminars, conferences and other in-service learning experiences at local, national and international levels.  A $600 cash prize accompanied the Cheng & Tsui award.

Liulin Zhang’s presentation, "Input Flood of Chinese Notional Passive Construction: A Usage-Based Account," was awarded the 2016 Tao-chung Ted Yao Memorial Award in a competitive review.  Her presentation was chosen from six nationwide proposals, and stood out from the three finalist presentations. The award was established in 2015 in honor of Professor Yao’s dedication to Chinese language teaching.  This was the inaugural award at the ACTFL/CLTA convention, and was accompanied by a $750 cash award.

Xi Yang presented her paper, "Teaching of Mandarin and the Second Language Phonology of Chinese Tones."  Yang is the first MA student in the Chinese Section whose paper was accepted by the ACTFL/CLTA convention and who made a successful national presentation debut during master’s study.

The College of Languages, Linguistics & Literature (one of the four Arts & Sciences colleges) of the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa offers a broad curriculum in English, foreign and heritage languages and literatures, second language studies, and linguistics.  Its Asia and Pacific focused curricula is unique in the nation.  The faculty regularly teaches more than 25 languages, and has the capacity to teach many more.

If you would like to support the college, please visit www.uhfoundation.org/GivetoLLL.