Associate Professor of East Asian Languages Zhuoyi Wang was recently invited to co-organize a workshop and present at the annual conference of the Chinese Language Teachers Association (CTLA). The meeting took place in Washington, D.C., in April.
Wang worked with colleagues Yingling Bao and Yea-Fen Chen of Indiana University, Jingjing Cai of Pennsylvania State University, Su-I Chen at Clemson University, and Celia Liu of The College of New Jersey to organize the workshop “Film as a pedagogical resource and method in the teaching of Chinese as a foreign language” (zhongwen dianying jiaoxue ziyuan ji jiaoxuefa).
As a panel member, Wang presented an analysis of selected sequences from the Chinese-language film Love Education (2017) to highlight how films can be used as a pedagogical tool in language and culture classes.
Earlier this year, Wang was invited to present a webinar titled “An Introduction to film language: the analysis of To Live (1994) as an example” (dianying yuyan fenxi fangfa jianjie: yi huozhe (1994) wei li), for members of the CTLA.
Through a close analysis of To Live, a film that is frequently used in Chinese language classes, Wang introduced language instructors to the neo-formalist approach to film analysis. His discussion included an explanation of how this methodology can aid the pedagogical use of films for language skill training, cultural introduction, and cultivation of critical thinking.
Also in April, Wang presented a guest lecture at Skidmore College. Invited by Skidmore’s Teaching Professor of Chinese Cathy Silber, the lecture was for Silber’s course “The Personal as the Political in 20th Century China ”
Wang’s discussion focused on a comparison between Ba Jin’s autobiographical novel The Family (Jia), written in Republican era China, and its 1956 film adaptation, made in the Maoist era.
