Learning how to Teach Chinese in a Course of Modern Fiction: A Case Study
of a New MAT Seminar

Xin Ning, Ph.D.

Rutgers University

With the increasing need of qualified Chinese language teachers in K-12 schools, many colleges now develop Teacher’s Certificate and MAT (Master of Arts for Teachers) programs, which aim to provide future Chinese teachers with solid trainings in both Chinese language pedagogy and Chinese culture. However, many teachers feel that the courses on Chinese literature and culture, though important and inspiring to themselves, can hardly be related directly to their Chinese teaching. As a result, it becomes a challenge to the instructor of “content” courses in the aforementioned graduate programs to find out a way to balance traditional studies of humanities and the need and expectation of students. In the last few semesters, the MAT program at Rutgers University has newly designed a course titled “Teaching Chinese through Modern Fiction.” The aims of this seminar are both to improve students’ understanding of the aesthetic characteristics as well as historical relevance of modern Chinese fiction, especially novels, from the May Fourth era to the present day and to help students to independently prepare and teach modern literary texts in advanced level Chinese class. Besides regular studies on modern Chinese novels’ artistic achievements as well as their relations to historical and psychological changes of Chinese society, students need to tailor certain sections of these literary works into texts suitable for classroom use. Each student needs to select one passage from these novels, prepare it for classroom teaching independently and compose a written teaching portfolio, and finally give a demo teaching in class. Hence whenever the students read the novels in class, they need to put not only their personal interest in literature but possible needs and questions of their potential students (mostly K-12)   into consideration. In this way, a traditional course on modern Chinese literature can be used by students to practice pedagogy and related to their future teaching. In my presentation, I will first provide an outline of the class and then use examples from students’ final projects to discuss possible contributions as well as potential problems and challenges this type of courses may have.