A workshop for area high school teachers of Chinese language and culture was held Saturday November 15, 2003 at Rice University. This was the second year that the workshop had been organized. My co-presenter was Dr. Chao-Mei Shen, also a faculty member of Rice’s Chinese Language Program (CLP).

        The teaching of Chinese in high schools is a new development that has gradually taken shape only in recent years. As newcomers in the field, these language teachers often have to cope with a shortage of training and professional opportunities that teachers of more established foreign languages (such as Spanish, French and German) can usually take for granted. The workshop idea took shape readily, as it was already part of a plan that I had been incubating for some time, namely, to organize the area teachers into a more permanent networking entity, a teachers’ association as it were, so that a regular channel could be established for the dissemination of educational services. The plan grew out of my long-time observation and experience of Chinese language instruction in the greater Houston area. I had given numerous informal workshops in the past, when weekend schools were the only public venue for Chinese language learning and when practically none of the teachers were trained language teachers. I had, moreover, written for these same teachers instructional materials in the form of textbooks. It was clear to me that both the teachers and the parents looked toward Rice for information and guidance. As the world stage evolves, so too does the academic atmosphere, or so one hopes, at least. The last decade has seen the growth of learners of Chinese and the eventual inclusion of teaching Chinese in the Texas public school system. With China’s dramatic entrance into the global political and economic arenas, one can only predict that the need for what we have been doing will increase.

        Currently the following high schools in Houston area offer Chinese language programs: Bellaire, Westside, Clear Lake, Clear Creek, Clear Brook, Clements, Dulles, Furr, and Lamar. Bellaire has the longest history, some twenty years. Furr and Lamar were only added formally this year. No school has more than one teacher, and some go back and forth between two schools. Currently there are about 800 students taking different levels of Chinese throughout the Houston area. Each teacher is solely responsible for the Chinese program in her or his respective school and must face and solve any problems more or less alone. One can easily appreciate, then, the teachers’ expressed desire to participate in the kind of forum that we provide at Rice. The networking and moral support resources present here for such teachers are simply priceless.

        The actual title of the workshop was “Technology- Enhanced Language Teaching”. The two presentations were (a) Technology-Enhanced Language Teaching I: Use of Online Tools for Developing the Three Basic Skills by Chao-mei Shen, and (b) Technology-Enhanced Language Teaching II: Salient Characteristics of the Language and Student Errors by Lilly Lee Chen. The implementations of the two projects received help from the personnel of Rice Language Resource Center, and my own project was funded by a Brown Grant titled “Visualize the Invisible: Web-Technologies and Teaching of the Structure of Chinese.” We focused on just two full presentations in order to avoid what the Chinese would characterize as zou ma kan hua (literally,“to look at the flowers while passing on horseback,” that is, to give a hurried glance). It is our hope that all of our participants saw more than a hurried glance and thus could take something of real substance (and scent) back to their local classrooms.

        The workshop was attended by teachers from the Independent School Districts of Houston, Clear Creek, and Fort Bend, all of whom received professional development credits through the School of Continuing Studies. The Center for the Study of Languages (CSL) offered financial help, and lunch was furnished by the Cultural Division of Taipei Economic and Cultural Office (TECO). Both Director Andrew Lian of CSL and Director Yuri Chih of TECO were present. So was Dr. Marshall McArthur, who provided much needed help on site.    (from Asian Studies Newsletter 2004, p.8)