Chinese - Teachers

Resources

Pinyin Info Website
This website is aimed at contributing to a better understanding of the Chinese languages and how Romanization can be used to write languages traditionally associated with Chinese characters (such as Japanese, Korean, and especially Mandarin Chinese).  The website is available at http://pinyin.info/index.html

New Book: China in the World
Edited by the Curriculum Specialists at Primary Source, Inc.
Published by Cheng & Tsui
China in the World (book and CD-ROM set) explores China’s captivating history through engrossing historical narrative and hundreds of primary sources. Unit overviews, introductory essays, and time lines provide the context for appreciating the events and implications of China’s complex history. A wealth of primary sources—imperial edicts, sea captains’ letters, short stories, poetry, essays, posters, photographs, and cartoons—allows students to explore events from multiple perspectives and through many genres. Primary source-based activities foster analytical thinking, hone verbal skills, and ask students to consider history as a complicated, messy, and fascinating subject.  

Written by teachers for teachers and students, China in the World serves as a perfect companion to standard world history texts and courses in world literature. It is also ideal for courses on East Asian studies, the history of China, or Chinese language and culture at the high school and college level. The emphasis on document analysis makes it an especially valuable resource for AP* or IB® courses.  The dual-platform CD includes hundreds of full-length documents, full-color images, maps, a bibliography, a glossary, and more, for convenient reference in the classroom or at home.
Visit the publisher’s website at http://tinyurl.com/46t4ce.

China Pix
From 1908 to 1932, Sidney Gamble (1890-1968) visited China four times, traveling throughout the country to collect data for social-economic surveys and to photograph urban and rural life, public events, architecture, religious statuary, and the countryside. A sociologist, renowned China scholar, and avid amateur photographer, Gamble used some of the pictures to illustrate his monographs.

The Sidney D. Gamble Photographs digital collection marks the first comprehensive public presentation of this large body of work that includes photographs of Korea, Japan, Hawaii, San Francisco, and Russia. The site currently features photographs dated between 1917 and 1932; the 1908 photographs will be digitized and uploaded as part of future additions to the site.  Learn more about and access this online collection at http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/gamble

Six Paths to China
http://www.kn.pacbell.com/wired/China/index.html

Chinese Lesson Plans
http://www.kcta.ku.edu/KCTAlessons/china.html

Chinese Resources
http://schiller.dartmouth.edu/chinese/

These links can be used to find valuable information regarding the learning and teaching of Foreign Languages in general.
Above are language specific resources.

Proficiency-Oriented Language Instruction and Assessment: A Curriculum Handbook for Teachers
Diane J. Tedick is the editor of The Minnesota Articulation Project, which has produced this resource for foreign language teachers.   The Handbook is comprised of classroom tasks and thematic units. Each task and unit appears in a standard format or template that stipulates the corresponding theme, standards, level, purpose, functions, language structures, cultural aspects, and modalities. These can be viewed at http://www.carla.umn.edu/articulation/polia_tasks.html.

The Handbook has organized the tasks and units to correspond to a preliminary model of a curriculum framework based on a series of nine broad cultural themes including (1) Self, (2) Interpersonal Relationships, (3) Basic Needs, (4) Social Activities and Cultural Practices, (5) Leisure, (6) Education, (7) Responsibilities, (8) Cultural Identities, and (9) Cultural Contexts. Each theme and corresponding sub-themes can be incorporated into the language curriculum at every level of instruction so that a spiraling effect occurs.
Read more about this handbook at http://nclrc.org/teaching_materials/materials_by_language/universal.html#handbook.
The handbook is available at http://www.carla.umn.edu/articulation/polia_tasks.html.

Culture Crossing: Cross-Cultural Etiquette Guide
CultureCrossing.net is an evolving database of cross-cultural information about every country in the world. This user-built guide allows people from all walks of life to share essential tips with each other about how to navigate our increasingly borderless world with savvy and sensitivity.

Easy to navigate and free to use, CultureCrossing.net provides an opportunity for travelers, business people and students to:  * Find information on 200+ countries and add knowledge to the guides  * Ask specific questions and chat with other users and experts * Connect directly with community members from around the world * Access global resources to further cross-cultural exploration  . Visit Culture Crossing at http://www.culturecrossing.net/index.php

K-12 Gateway to the Less Commonly Taught Languages
UCLA Language Materials Project
The UCLA Language Materials Project (LMP) website now includes a new resource titled The K-12 Gateway to the Less Commonly Taught Languages.

The new site offers easy navigation to a wealth of information, with the foundation being a set of downloadable lesson plans, pilot-tested by K-12 teachers from Anchorage to Virginia. The plans and supplementary materials were developed for elementary and secondary foreign language teachers for teaching a first year language class. They are written in English, but can be adapted to any language and grade level.   There two sections in addition to the lesson plans: one on curriculum design, standards, and proficiency-based teaching; and another offering links to national Language Resource Centers, language teachers associations, teachers' forums, assessment guides and professional development opportunities.  
Go to: www.lmp.ucla.edu/K-12

World Language Assessment
Get in the Mode! supports and empowers world language educators to improve student proficiency through a variety of assessment strategies. Focusing on the three modes of communication (interpretive, presentational, and interpersonal), this resource provides a framework of formative, interim, and summative assessments for use at any grade level. Access this video on demand series at http://www.ecb.org/worldlanguageassessment .

Suggestions for how to integrate application resources
Are you looking for an online tutorial on how to use applications like Microsoft Office, Hot Potatoes, or JavaScript? Looking for ideas on how to use the World Wide Web? The Interlanguage Language Roundtable website includes a page of links to a wide variety of tutorials that may be of interest to language teachers, available at http://www.govtilr.org/R_tutorials.htm.

Quotes by Nationality
Are you looking for materials for beginning-of-class activities? Short authentic examples of language use? Ways to introduce important cultural and literary figures? A compilation of quotations, organized by nationality, is available at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/nationality.html.

World Heritage
http://whc.unesco.org/en/list

World Travel Guide
http://www.worldtravelguide.net/country/

http://www.cal.org

ACTFL American council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages
www.actfl.org

LanguageGuide.org
http://languageguide.org/