Hot Business in Teaching Chinese

       Presenters: Zhaodan Huang, principal, Chinese Language School of Connecticut

                       Rachel Meyer, co-founder, ABC Language Exchange

                       Larry Chen, co-founder, ActiveChinese

                       Alex Yang, CEO of Pyngo

This panel is made up of principal and founders of some prominent Chinese schools and organizations in the US. They come together to talk about doing business in teaching Chinese as a foreign language and also give audience an introduction of challenges and opportunities facing Chinese Schools in the 21^st century.

Chinese Schools/organizations are generally characterized into two categories. One is primarily teaching heritage students located in a Chinese crowded area. The other type is serving to Americans with little or none Chinese background and assistance outside of the classroom. There is a third type emerging over the years. That is a school located in a relatively wealthy area with two tracks of curriculum to cater to different clients’ needs. These two tracks are rigorous curriculum plan for serious parents and less rigorous curriculum with more culture elements for parents who want early exposure for their children. These three types of schools emerged and exist for various reasons. However, they may share similar challenges and opportunities with the big environment paying more attention to China as a rising super power. This panel will walk audience through questions like what are the challenges and competitions and how these companies and schools are coping with opportunities and challenges.

 

Presenters Background:

Zhaodan Huang is the principal of Chinese Language School of Connecticut (CLSC). Before joining CLSC, Zhaodan has been the Family and Children’s Program Manager at China Institute in New York City for the last two and a half years. In her leisure time, she also works as a part time news anchor for SinoVision Asian Culture and Media Group. She has previously worked as principal of the Pujiang-Chinese-English Bilingual School in Zhejiang, China. She is working towards her Ed. D. in International Educational Development from Columbia University, specializing in Language, Literacy and Technology.

In addition to her administrative roles, Zhaodan also has rich experience teaching both children and adult learners of Chinese. Her students range from 3 year old children to 74 year olds, from families to corporate professionals.

Rachel Meyer is Co-Founder of ABC Language Exchange, New York and San Francisco's largest private foreign language school. Ms. Meyer's experience in language learning and training spans almost 20 years. She is fluent in Mandarin Chinese and Spanish as well as proficient in French and American Sign Language. She has taught and directed programs in English, Chinese and Spanish for private schools and language schools here and abroad. She completed her Bachelor's degree in Chinese studies from Smith College. Ms. Meyer lived in Taiwan for three years where she taught English and furthered her Chinese studies on a graduate level at Tunghai University. In 1997 Ms. Meyer acted in a popular Chinese television show called "Adventures in New York" shown on mainland Chinese national television. She was elected and served on the board of the Chinese Teacher's Association of Greater New York from 2002-2004. Ms. Meyer has written articles on language learning for various publications and has been featured in the New York Times, New York Magazine, Crain's of New York and The Daily News. She is currently completing a beginner's Chinese textbook, which will be published in fall 2008.

 

Larry Chen is Co-Founder of ActiveChinese, a San Francisco-based innovative Chinese language learning company. The ActiveChinese multimedia curriculum is currently in schools all over the United States and many other countries from grade schools to university level, pushing the boundaries of technology to make Mandarin accessible to the western learner. ActiveChinese also provides an array of teacher resources including lesson plans, assessment tests, and VIP assistant. Born and educated in Shanghai, Mr. Chen is a veteran of the Internet technology industry in the Silicon Valley, including Oracle, President and CEO of SRS2, senior vice president and CIO of Citadon, Inc, and co-founder, senior vice president and CTO of Bidcom, where Chen was a key member of the executive team that led several high profile acquisitions and an IPO registration on NASDAQ.

　

Alex Yang is the CEO of Pyngo, the fastest growing online Chinese/English language exchange community. Pyngo has attracted Chinese learners from 30 different countries as well as from 100 different schools/universities around the world in just three months after its launch. Mr. Yang, who was born in China and moved to the U.S. at age 12, started working in the Internet industry while he was still a sophomore in college. Over the past 10 years, he has been focused on creating Internet software for the non-profit and education sectors. Some of the more notable projects include: Community Enterprise, a content management product for Citysoft (a sociallly responsible Internet startup serving non-profit and educational institutions), the corporate intranet for Teach For America, and a social-networking fund raising platform for iStandFor.com.