REGISTRATION CLOSED

DATE: Sat, Feb. 15, 2020
TIME: 9am - 3pm
PLACE: Hunter College West Building, Room 603

SPEAKER: MS. YING JIN

ACTFL 2018 NATIONAL LANGUAGE TEACHER OF THE YEAR
Mandarin Chinese teacher at:
Curpertino High School and
Homestead High School

Ms. Ying Jin has more 20 years Chinese language and culture teaching experience in diverse settings, including middle schools, high schools, and colleges in both the U.S. and China. She is currently a teacher of Mandarin Chinese at the Fremont Union High School District in Cupertino, California. Ms. Jin was named 2018 National Language Teacher of the Year, and she was the first Chinese language teacher to be awarded this ACTFL honor.

INNOVATIVE IDEAS TO FOSTER THE 21ST CENTURY MINDS

Running out of ideas to engage students in your world language classroom? Wondering how to incorporate ACTFL Three Modes of Communication along with The Four Language Learning Skills in your teaching? Feeling bored with repeating your activities year after year?

This workshop will introduce a series of classroom-proven activities designed to meet the needs of 21st Century Learners. These activities will positively enhance students’ skills in listening, speaking, reading and writing while incorporating the three modes of communication—interpretive, interpersonal, presentational.

These strategies are tried and tested in real classroom teaching. This will be an interactive session featuring student work samples, video demonstrations, and tips on how to build a strong and cohesive student-centered learning community. A variety of practical classroom activities along with step-by-step instructions will be shared with the audience. The activities include Quiz Quiz Trade, Ask Ask Trade, Sentence Picture, Running Dictation, just to name a few.

This hands-on workshop will be split into two parts, the first part focusing on auditory strategies while the second part on literacy. The audience will be asked to actively participate in sample activities and will walk away with some ideas they can easily apply to their own classroom practice.

On Saturday, February 15, 2020, Hunter College’s Chinese Flagship Program and Columbia University’s Weatherhead East Asian Institute had the honor of jointly hosting a Professional Development Workshop under the direction of Ms. Ying Jin. This workshop aimed at addressing and answering the curious challenges instructors face when attempting to teach to 21st century minds. Ms. Jin, a seasoned expert of Chinese language instruction, answered the call of this workshop, “Innovative Ideas to Foster the 21st Century Minds” by calling for an emphasis on meaningful communication, so that all students can begin building foundational, real-world skills throughout their language learning journey.

Nearly 70 Chinese teachers and administrators, representing learners of Chinese across the whole spectrum of instruction, ranging from grade school all the way to collegiate study, gathered on Saturday morning to attend Ms. Jin’s workshop. Besides sharing some of her personal experience, gained over her 20 years of teaching, she also offered practical tips and classroom-proven activities to engage the variety Chinese-learners teachers work to serve during their day-to-day work.

Recognizing the importance of maintaining student interest in course material, Ms. Jin showed participants how, if flexible and inventive, instructors can draw on a wide variety of sources and material to develop fresh, new teaching strategies. While sharing a total of 20 different language acquisition strategies, Ms. Jin reminded participants that they should not focus on where the methods may come from; rather, they should focus on developing inventive, non-labor intensive strategies that are easy for students to pick up. Strategies for speaking, listening, reading, and writing were all provided, many of which participants tried themselves. Participants found most methods to be intuitive, easy to pick up, and helpful in meeting the overarching goal of establishing meaningful communication for 21st century minds.

Workshop organizers hope that participants can use the tools built during this workshop to better incorporate their students’ development of interpretive, interpersonal, presentational communication in speaking, listening, reading, and writing. We look forward to further cooperation with Ms. Jin and more experts in the future.