Web Assisted Chinese Learning

1. Web Assisted Chinese Learning -- What’s the difference? By Dr. Zhang Ping March 2003 Tel Aviv University

2. Contents • A brief history of WACL. • Three types of WACL site. • Four key components of WACL contents. • Three problems with WACL. • Conclusions.

3. A brief history of WACL • First Period 1995 - 1999 • Second Period 2000 - • Watershed: The 2nd International Conference on New Technologies in Teaching and Learning Chinese, 2000, Guilin, China

4. First Period 1995 - 1999 • Made in America. • Made by Chinese teachers. • Used inside university. • Simple components from technological point of view.

5. First Period 1995 - 1999 • Harvard University • Go to its courses, find out a grammar note and tell me what you learned. • When was this site built? When it was updated last time? • Go to one of its teaching materials archive, and try to learn something.

6. Second Period 2000 - • Made in China, Taiwan and other countries. • Made by joint force of Chinese teachers and computer engineers. • Used all over the world. • Advanced and professional components from technological point of view.

7. Second Period 2000 - • On Line College of Chinese Language • Go to register as a student. • Who is the online teacher now? • Go to classroom and learn something, tell everyone.

8. Three types of WACL site • Web site as a school. • Web site as a textbook. • Web site as course assistance.

9. Web site as a school • Students registration. • Degree awarding. (some) • Multi courses. • On line teachers. (some) • Advanced and professional technological components.

10. Web site as a school • http://www.eblcu.net/newchinese/nother/yanshi.html • Choose a course, try to learn something and describe the way of learning.

11. Web site as a textbook • All the necessary components required by a traditional textbook, texts, vocabulary, grammar notes, exercises, answers, etc. • A clear subject of the site, supported by all the materials in the site. • Independence of the site and students’ activity.

12. Web site as a textbook • http://www2.kenyon.edu/people/bai/vcsc.htm • Go to one lesson and describe the system of learning in this web site.

13. Web site as course assistance • Made by teachers. • Materials that seem necessary to the teachers. • Experiments of new ways of teaching. • Simple and advanced technological components.

14. Web site as course assistance • http://www.tau.ac.il/~pzhang/

15. Four key components of WACL contents • Teachers’ lectures. • http://www.tau.ac.il/~pzhang/grammar/complement/comple2.htm • http://www.eblcu.net/lesson/demo/zonghehanyu/Norm_015yufa.html • http://www.tau.ac.il/~pzhang/characters/character1.htm • http://www.eblcu.net/lesson/demo/zonghehanyu/Norm_015shengci.html • Learning materials. • http://www.tau.ac.il/~pzhang/sing/wangwei04.html • http://www.chineseon.net/demo/course/bzzw-2-5_demo.htm • Exercises. • Listening comprehension, reading comprehension, pronunciation. • Other materials (introductions, links, etc.)

16. Three problems with WACL • Web vs traditional media • http://www.tau.ac.il/~pzhang/tools/readtoolframeset.htm • http://www.cmilitary.com/articleReader.php?idx=41646 • Teachers vs engineers • Dreams vs reality.

17. Conclusions • The development of WACL has been remarkable. • WACL is still in its early stage. • The main problem with WACL is its identification. • In the foreseeable future, most developments on WACL will be from China and Taiwan.