A Message from the Program Chair
of the 2000 CLTA Conference

Dear Colleagues:

We are very pleased to inform you that by the deadline (February 14) for submission of paper proposals for the 2000 CLTA conference, the program committee had received 25 panel proposals and 34 individual  proposals, plus a number of special session requests. Thank you very much for your enthusiasm and active participation.

The proposals received cover a variety of topics and issues, from the implementation of the national standards to Chinese language program building, from technology to fundamental academic research. At this moment, I would like to offer a glimpse of some of the topics that will be presented at the November conference.

A major theme that emerges this year is the implementation of National Standards for Foreign Language Education into instructional curricula, not only at the K-12 level, but also at the college level. These panels will familiarize our colleagues with the national standards, and help us understand the significance of the national standards so that we can incorporate them into our own teaching.

Technology is again a popular theme. Even though presentations and introductions of new computer multimedia courseware will be made by both panels and individual papers, the trend this year is on different aspects of Web-based Chinese language instruction. With more and more universities using computers to aid students in learning Chinese, the urgency and necessity of the incorporation of current technology in Chinese language instruction will definitely generate more discussion on its creative employment.

Another area worth mentioning is presentations of on-going and/or results of academic research. The research includes tonal acquisition, vocabulary learning, reading comprehension and character mastering. Also, we are pleased to see the resurgence of Chinese linguistic studies. This area, which has been sidelined for a few years, has come back healthy and strong.

In addition to the above-mentioned topics, there are other interesting proposals, such as issues of articulation, bridging the gap between intermediate and advanced levels, film and literature in Chinese classroom, and the teaching of classical Chinese.

The ACTFL preparatory meeting has not yet been held and we have no information on the number of sessions to be allocated to us. In the coming weeks the committee will make every possible endeavor to accommodate as many of our contributors as possible in the allotted space.

We look forward to seeing you in Boston.

Baozhang He

Chinese Language Program, EALC
Harvard University
(O) 617-495-2945
Fax 617-495-2247