Global Engagement > Partnerships > Programs for Partner Institutions > Interacting with Chinese People as the Means and the Purpose of Language Learning

Interacting with Chinese People as the Means and the Purpose of Language Learning

​​​​Project Summary:

In this GLE project, Dr. Sharon Guan incorporated a GLE component that connected DePaul students with a group of students from Tianjin Normal University in China, which has been done since 2018 in all her beginning and intermediate Chinese classes. This project allowed students to practice Chinese in real life and gain a better understanding of life in China.  Students from DePaul and students in Tianjin formed a group in a chat platform called WeChat, which is used ubiquitously in China.  Topics addressed in the class were driven by what students wanted to talk about with their international partners.  Students were also able to develop friendships with their partners that may last beyond the class because of the incorporation of this GLE project in Dr. Guan's consecutive Chinese classes.

Project Length:

  • ​10 Weeks

Technology Tools Used:

  • WeChat
  • Quizlet
  • Digication
  • D2L
  • Zoom
  • TikTok
  • Google Sheets

​Interaction Mode:

  • Synchronous
  • Asynchronous

​Learning Outcomes: 

  • Students listened to and comprehended the meanings of words, phrases, and sentences covered in this project and the previous quarter projects.
  • Students constructed sentences with words and phrases learned from class and from their language partners. They carried out conversations with native speakers using words and sentences learned from each class.
  • Students recognized the characters covered in each class, pronounced them correctly, and understood their literal meaning as well as their meaning in the context of a sentence.
  • Students wrote the characters covered in each lesson and used these characters for written communication.

To learn more about this project, please read the article on pages 21-22 found in DePaul's Modern Languages Newsletter here.​



Sharon Guan

Sharon Guan

Institution: DePaul University
Discipline: Chinese Language Instruction
Course name: Beginning and Intermediate Chinese

Xiaojin Xu

Xiaojin Xu

Institution: Tianjin Normal University
Discipline: English
Course name: General English (for Non-English Major Students)

Partner Institutions

DePaul University
Chicago, IL, United States

 

Back to Project Examples ↩

​​​​​