CLTA newsletter May 2019

CLTA NEWSLETTER
1.Could you tell us a few things about your professional life as well as your personal life
that you are willing to share with CLTA members (current projects you are working on,
your hobbies and favorite food, etc.)
Some teachers told me that they could easily tell
that I am from Beijing because of my Beijing
accent. It is true that I was born and grew up
in Beijing. I received my English language
education at Beijing Foreign Language School,
where I learned British English first and then
switched to American English, as its retroflex r
caused me no trouble to pronounce. My
professional life consists of two segments:
teaching English as a foreign language in China
in 1980’s and teaching Chinese as a foreign
language in the United States since 1990’s. In
Fall 1988, I was accepted into the Graduate
School of Education at the State University of
New York at Buffalo. In May 1995, I got my
PhD in Foreign Language Education, and I was
hired as a lecturer of Chinese by the University
of Oregon for Academic Year 1995-1996 and
then as a visiting assistant professor of Chinese
by the College of William and Mary for
Academic Year 1996-1997. In Fall 1997, I
started to teach Chinese language and
literature at the University of Vermont. As I
continued to teach, my position changed from
a visiting position to a tenure-track one, and
then to a tenured one. I was promoted to the
associate professorship in 2006 and then to the
full professorship in 2012. In Fall 2007, the
Department of Asian Languages and
Literatures was founded, and I have been
appointed to head the department in addition
to the Chinese language program since then.
With the language education I have received
and with the language teaching experiences I
have acquired, I am keenly aware of two facts
and two related presumptions: 1) Foreign
language teaching theories are mostly based on
the teaching of an Indo-European language
such as English, French, and Spanish as a
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