The Confucius Institute at the University of Minnesota, U.S. successfully held the 2010 STARTALK Summer Intensive Teacher Training Program

Integrating culture into language instruction – trainee Yang Kaishan’s Peking Opera class developed for college students

In spring 2010, the Confucius Institute at the University of Minnesota, U.S. was approved for a critical language project, “STARTALK Fund”, sponsored by the United States Department of Defense, and planned to collaborate with the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, College of Education and Human Development at the University of Minnesota to jointly hold a credit Chinese Language Teacher Training Program in summer 2010 to train and educate more capable Chinese language teachers for the state of MN as well as other states of U.S.

The teacher training programs hosted by the Confucius Institute at the University of Minnesota began on June 21, and 17 on-job Chinese language teachers across the U.S. participated in it. The two-week program was concluded on July 2, with two graduate credits awarded. The main topic of this program was how to integrate culture in current proficiency-oriented Chinese language instruction. This program adopted a new concept of integrating culture as the core in foreign language instruction, based on the cross-cultural communication theory and the content teaching method, guiding and strengthening the participants’ awareness of culture as an essential component in foreign language instruction, and consequently seeking its applications in instruction, teaching materials and assessment. As the final outcome of this program, each participant designed a Chinese language curriculum module integrating culture as the core in the practicum session. The participants spoke very highly of the training, and considered it as one of the best teacher training programs they have ever attended.

The training program was instructed by Wang Yu, the Chinese director of the Confucius Institute at the University of Minnesota, Martha Bigelow, professor from the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, College of Education and Human Development, and Hanna Ennser-Kananan, Ph.D. student from the same department, as well as Margaret Wong (Wang Zhaohua ), who has over 30 years teaching experience in the State of MN. ( Contributed by Wang Yu, the Chinese director of the Confucius Institute at the University of Minnesota)

Making use of local materials – the participants showing with great joy the paper-cutting works they just learned

Trainee Chinese language teachers showcasing their certificates

(Back row from left: Wang Yu, Martha Bigelow, Hanna Ennser-Kananan, and Margaret Wong)