Reflections from CCLE GA and Visiting Scholars Ying-Yu Chen, Yu-An Lee, and Meng-Ting Lin
CCLE Author
May 18, 2023
On August 13, 2021, the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (UHM) and National Tsing Hua University signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for cooperation and exchange between the two universities. A program agreement on establishing a Center for Chinese Language Education under the UHM College of Arts, Languages & Letters was also signed between the two institutions, determining the Center’s mission and scope of work.
Prior to the signing, two visiting scholars, Meng-Ting Lin, Yu-An Lee, and one visiting teacher, Jing-Tian Huang, were selected from the candidates recommended by NTHU to fill the Center’s visiting positions for the 2021- 2022 academic year. Visiting scholars Meng-Ting Lin and Yu-An Lee were officially installed as part of CCLE staff in July 2021. The Center also appointed a Graduate Assistant, Ying-Yu Chen, for the Fall 2021 semester to help with teaching, tutoring, and activity planning.
At the end of their period at CCLE, the three would leave a few words about their time as staff, the activities they have had the chance to take part in, and their reflections on the overall experience.
Ying-Yu Chen
Around a year ago, I was grateful that I was awarded CCLE GAship for my PhD program at UHM. With this GAship, I am able to focus on my PhD study without financial pressure and gain practical teaching experience at the same time. As a GA of CCLE, In the past academic year, I have taught Chinese language courses CHN201 and CHN202. I was also in charge of related outreach activities, such as promoting the Huayu BEST program, the TOCFL test at UHM, and editing the Center newsletter with other visiting scholars and student helpers. I appreciate this precious opportunity to start my UHM student life and expand my social life.
Yu-An and Meng-Ting came to Hawaii one year earlier than me so they taught me lots of survival tips for Hawaii when I arrived. They also helped me get into the school life because they had been teaching assistants with professors and hosted several different extracurricular activities with other graduate students for a year. They were auditing graduate courses as well. They discussed, presented, and completed collaborative work with other graduate students to advance their professional knowledge. Meanwhile, they were constructing great relationships with other UHM instructors in an academic manner. This observation demonstrates CCLE’s goal of bridging US and Taiwan through Chinese teaching, learning, and cultural exchange. Both UHM students and the potential scholars from Taiwan all benefited from the CCLE program.
Thank you, CCLE, for giving me the opportunity to have a new student life in a foreign country. Thanks to this opportunity, I was able to meet many enthusiastic, caring, and warm scholars. I hope more and more excellent Taiwanese scholars or TCSL instructors can join, strengthen, and perfect this valuable program.
Yu-An Lee
From August 2021 to January 2023, I came to the University of Hawaii thanks to the support of the Huayu BEST Project of the Taiwan Ministry of Education. Normally, Hawaii is a place that can only be seen in textbooks or maps, so I never thought I would be able to come and live here. Here at CCLE, I was a Flagship one-on-one teacher, Chinese Corner activity staff, designer of the STARTALK after-school teaching materials, and an after-school review tutor for Chinese class.
When planning the Chinese Corners, I was happy to learn that everyone was very accepting of multiculturalism. Because I am from Taiwan, I introduced traditional Taiwanese culture whenever I hosted a Chinese Corner event. For example: I presented on the Tainan YanShui Fengpao Fireworks Festival, New Year’s Year-End Party (尾牙), and modern Mandarin expressions in Taiwan, etc. When I see the benign exchanges between cultures during the events, I become very moved and my sense of accomplishment grows stronger.
Through June to August 2022, I returned to Taiwan to serve as a big class teacher of the first University of Hawaii Chinese Flagship Summer Intensive Course at Tsinghua University. The entire teaching team designed local cultural courses and visiting activities together. At first, when I received the task of becoming a big class teacher, the pressure was quite high. But thanks to the teaching methods I learned at UHM, it helped me lead the class without issue. I tried my best to prepare the teaching materials every night. And after the 8-week course, I really benefited a lot.
Every class and every day will accumulate new experiences and experiences. Thank you everyone for everything in this one and a half year. I will definitely remember this wonderful experience. Thanks to this experience, I was able to grow into myself even more.
Meng-Ting Lin
It has been over a year since I first came to Hawaii back in November 2021. When I first arrived, the pandemic was still quite serious and all classes had to be conducted online. Even though I was in Hawaii, I could only see my students through a screen, which was quite a challenge. Fortunately, in the Spring 2022 semester, physical classes slowly resumed and I finally got to see the campus and meet the teachers and students in person. The more I get to know this place, the more I come to love it.
My primary responsibility here at CCLE was to provide one-on-one Chinese tutoring and assist in organizing various cultural activities. Whether it was teaching students of different language levels and backgrounds or organizing cultural events, I always ended up learning more than I expected. In addition, I also served as a teaching assistant for many courses. One of which was CHN 411, a class to help students improve their Chinese proficiency in speaking. I also joined the Project-Based Language Learning (PBLL) project team and worked with other teachers to develop teaching materials for the UHM STARTALK Year-Round Program. The units we designed included “Tour Around Oahu,” “Honolulu Chinatown,” and “Sun-Yat Sen’s Footsteps in Hawaii.” Under the guidance of Professor Song Jiang, not only did I improve my teaching ability, but I also had the opportunity to design teaching materials and test questions.
As I am about to return to Taiwan, I look forward to applying everything I have learned here at UHM to my Chinese teaching career in the future. This has been a truly memorable and precious journey for me, and I want to thank everyone I met here for all their help and support.