Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language

 "For me, the happiest moment is when I hear children say ‘This is awesome!' and see the desire of learning on their faces," says Pei-ying Wu, a student in Penn GSE's Teaching, Learning and Curriculum program and one of the teachers in a new after-school Chinese language program that launched this fall in West Philadelphia.

West Philly's first-ever Chinese-as-a-Foreign-Language after-school program is the brainchild of Penn GSE Lecturer Anne Pomerantz GEd'98 Gr'01 and Hilary Bonta GEd'98. Both mothers of elementary schoolchildren, the pair shared an interest in foreign language instruction — and a desire to bring it into Philadelphia classrooms.

One day, Pomerantz explains, "It just came to us. We have all these Chinese-language speakers here at GSE. What if they taught Chinese to our kids?"

To handle curriculum and supervisory duties, they turned to Ming-Hsuan Wu, a doctoral student in GSE's Educational Linguistics program. For classroom duties, they recruited Chinese-speaking graduate students in GSE's TESOL and TLC programs. Joining Pei-ying Wu were Hui-wen Liang and Wan-chin Hsieh.

A partnership between Penn GSE and the University City Arts League (UCAL), the program is now a fieldwork site for the TESOL program and a poster child for the program's commitment to applying theory to practice.

Pomerantz and her GSE colleagues Cheri Micheau Gr'90 and Teresa Pica Gr'82 all provided theoretically informed guidance on the best teaching pedagogies for young students.

"Plus," says Pomerantz, "they love the fact that they're in a real classroom — not a manufactured teaching situation."

For the student-teachers, the program provides a hands-on opportunity to put state-of-the-art theories on language teaching and learning into practice. For example, because there are very few commercially available Chinese-language learning materials for non-heritage learners, the teachers had to develop their own original curriculum. Realizing that the students they would be teaching have no Chinese-speaking relatives, the teachers created materials and activities designed to introduce beginning-level pupils to Chinese culture.

For instance, to introduce the Chinese writing system, the teachers had their students "sketch" particular words and then use Chinese brushes to recreate their drawings. In the process, students learned about the development of pictographs in Chinese and the importance of calligraphy in the culture.

That kind of innovation hasn't gone unnoticed. At a recent conference held at Penn, Ming-Hsuan Wu explains, she and two of her fellow GSE students presented their unit on introducing Chinese character formation. "We shared our classroom experience with other foreign language teachers in a workshop called Drawing the Natural World."

Parents, too, have been getting into the act — with mom and dad often finding themselves helping their children review their Chinese homework. Poring over the electronic files the teachers have created, parents are picking up the language on their own, and some have even expressed interest in learning more.

It's that kind of engagement — from parents and students as well as from GSE faculty — that has been so gratifying to the student-teachers as they work to promote Chinese education in West Philadelphia. Or, as Pei-ying Wu explains, "I am grateful for having so much support from my colleagues, parents, and the GSE professors throughout the whole process."