Welcome

Welcome to the Chinese language class Web site. First of all I'd like to thank my colleagues Jane McCarville, curriculum design specialist, and Bob Nelson, Webmaster, for their support, time, and effort. My teaching assistant, Kwan Ming-Huang, recorded the texts and songs with me. 

I'm the Chinese language and culture instructor, Susan Butler, and my Chinese name is Su Rui (pronounced Sue Ray - Su is my maiden name).

I earned my Master's Degree in Adult Education with an ESL teaching certificate. To meet the needs of our community, I designed and started to teach the Chinese course at Spokane Community College last fall quarter. 

I am very interested in cross-cultural communication, and I love to be the bridge person to transfer the best from East to West and vice versa. 

My Teaching Philosophy

I am the only person for many students to experience the native pronunciation. So I will not only be their language teacher, but also the Chinese culture's representative. In order to meet the needs for this kind of population, I decided to adopt ESL (English as a second language) communicative teaching method for my students. I taught ESL class in different levels, and I had pre-elementary ESL students also. I won't teach Chinese language using the Grammar-translate method. For the grammar part, necessary explanations to certain language points are provided while excessive theoretical introductions are avoided. I believe my role in the Chinese classroom is to provide students with the tools they need to communicate in the language. I am a facilitator who guides the students on their way to be interested in Chinese and becoming more proficient Chinese speakers.

Adult students come into the classroom with a wealth of knowledge from their life experience (called background knowledge or schema). Just because they are new to the Chinese language does not mean that adult students should be given activities that are more appropriate for children. Finally, I decided to design the materials in accordance of their daily life, seasons, and occasions. Weekly agendas and journal writing were my first thoughts, and they both turned out successfully. 

Weekly agenda helps adult students' plan ahead, and it also works as a reminder for them because many students have to go to work. When test time is due, or special events such as the Chinese New Year, Chinese dance troupe, and guest speakers, the students could adjust their schedule to manage those activities. The textbooks are supplemented by useful phrases I include and are changeable to meet the students needs. Also, I try to use picture aids to make sentences vivid and concrete for students to remember and use them. I choose different colors for each week so students will remember colors in Chinese naturally. 

Once a week, student's journals are turned in to me with learning experience, study skills, and questions on language. I encourage them to write English and Chinese, and I don't deduct points for grammar or punctuation. If the mistakes are common, I would make transparencies of the collection of their sentences, then I work with my students to find out the correct answers. Once in a while, we share their journals. I record their journals, then play the tapes in the class. They couldn't believe how many new words they've been adding to each journal, and how many sentence patterns they've had in their journals. I could hear them revising the journals while I was reading. One student created his own journal series, trying to write in pinyin as much as he could.

Survival needs, learning stages, and fun are my principles when I design my teaching materials because I am a second language (English) learner. Once students gain interest, they want to explore more.