ALLEX Foundation: Establish and Enhance Japanese and Chinese Language Programs

ALLEX Program Interviews Completed in Asia

allexoffice — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 17:37:14 +0000

Members of the ALLEX Academic Team spent a total of seven days in December and January in Asia interviewing candidates for the Teaching Associate and Teaching Fellow Programs. Of the more than 200 candidates who submitted paper applications at the pre-interview screening stage, about eighty were invited to the final matching stage where just over thirty teachers will be awarded a position in the United States.

The interviews consisted of two rigorous individual sessions with ALLEX staff and affiliated professors. In Japan, the interview was held at Waseda University; in Taiwan the OhStudy office served as site host.

ALLEX Teachers Participate in Refresher Workshop

allexoffice — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 05:36:53 +0000

On January 22, 2011 ALLEX teachers participated in a full day Refresher Workshop hosted by the SPEAC Program of the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures at The Ohio State University led by Professor Mari Noda, a specialist in East Asian language pedagogy. Professor Noda was joined by a team of four specialists including Masayuki Itomitsu, Steven Knicely, Virginia Marcus, and Yongfang Zhang. Thank you to SPEAC for being such a great host. We wish all the ALLEX teachers great success in their teaching this coming semester!

ALLEX Graduate Awarded Ito Chaplin Award

allexoffice — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 14:33:56 +0000

ALLEX graduate Wakana Maekawa was awarded the Hamako Ito Chaplin Memorial Award. Maekawa attended the ALLEX Teacher Training Institute at Portland State University in 2007 and completed her M.A. in Applied Linguistics at Texas Tech University in May, 2009. At Texas Tech, she taught beginning and intermediate Japanese language courses as a graduate instructor. She is currently a visiting instructor of Japanese at Hamilton College, New York.

The Hamako Ito Chaplin Memorial Award is administered though the Association for Asian Studies. In accordance with the wishes of the Chaplin family, each year a prize of $1,000 is awarded to a current graduate student or a new Japanese language professional who aims to work in a North American institution, in an area that directly involves Japanese language teaching.

(Reprinted from the Association of Asian Studies Newsletter, Spring 2011; picture from the Hamilton College website.)

ALLEX Graduate Featured on the News

allexoffice — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 00:33:50 +0000

This article is reposted from USI Alumni Online

Mikami to Intern at Washington D.C. Museum

A Japanese teacher and recent USI graduate in art will hold a semester-long internship at the Smithsonian American Art Museum starting in September. Wakako Mikami ’10 will work in an education-related area of the American Art Museum, and her assignments will include weekly workshops, seminars, and on-site facility tours. With her Bachelor of Arts degree and the Smithsonian internship, she hopes to become an art educator.

ALLEX Teachers Arrive for Teacher Training Institute

tom — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 00:16:53 +0000

The ALLEX class of 2011 arrived at Portland State University on June 16, eager to get going on their new careers as teachers and students at American universities. For the next eight weeks these 34 young people will be immersed in the Chinese and Japanese Teacher Training Institute at PSU.

This intensive training program includes five hours of class per day, five days a week, for eight weeks. The ALLEX Teaching Associates receive 16 graduate credits in East Asian language pedagogy for the course. Participants develop teaching skills through practice teaching of actual language classes that are videotaped and critiqued, as well as lectures on the theory and practice of foreign language pedagogy. The program covers all aspects of running a Chinese or Japanese program, including how to develop curriculum, syllabi, placement tests and evaluating student performance. The course also deals with topics such as graduate student life, classroom content management systems, classroom safety and handling problems in the classroom, and harassment.

Though the intensive nature of the course will keep the students focused for the next two months, they could not be studying in a more beautiful and vibrant city than Portland. As one student emailed us, “I safely arrived in Portland. It’s a beautiful city.”

The Teacher Training Institute is run by the ALLEX Asian Language Teacher Training Consortium, comprised of East Asian language faculty from Cornell, Ohio State, Portland State and Washington University.

Above: Professor Neil Kubler guides a teacher trainee during demo-prep class.

Above: Professor Ginger Marcus engages the trainees in a discussion of culture and language.

Above: Trainees observe Professor Haohsiang Liao’s language classes every morning.

Above: Trainees perform self-introductions on the first day of the program.

Pre-Departure Orientations Held in Tokyo and Taipei

tom — Sun, 15 May 2011 00:11:48 +0000

One month before leaving for Portland all ALLEX Teaching Associates attended a full-day Orientation session, held in Taipei on May 14 and Tokyo on May 15. The sessions covered a variety of topics organized to prepare the students for their departure to the US and their future lives as teachers and students. Topics included visa procedures, preparing for the course at PSU, how to handle the dual roles of being both a teacher and a student at the host university, and we even tackled the impossible—health insurance in the USA! The students were also very interested to hear from current and former ALLEX instructors, including Hsuan-Chu Chloe Lee, who has done a brilliant job creating a brand new Chinese language program at Trine University in Indiana. After that, it was time for tea and cakes at a local café, where the students continued the process of building friendships, which will continue over the summer at PSU, and for many years into the future on Facebook.

ALLEX Teachers Participate in Refresher Workshop

tom — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 12:55:27 +0000

ALLEX Teacher Featured in South Carolina Newspaper

tom — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 14:02:19 +0000

Raye Jui-Ling Chiang, 2010 ALLEX lecturer from Taiwan, is featured in the South Carolina Times and Democrat newspaper. Ms. Chiang was trained in the Ohio State University SPEAC Chinese and Japanese Teacher Training Program before heading to South Carolina State University. The new Mandarin courses at SCSU are the result of a partnership between ALLEX (www.allex.org) and SCU. Best of luck to Ms. Chiang and her new students! “Jiayou!” (“Good Luck” in Mandarin.)

ALLEX Teachers Complete Training Program

tom — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 22:15:44 +0000

The 2010 ALLEX group of teachers completed the intensive summer teacher training program at Ohio State University and have moved on to their host institutions around the country. This year’s host institutions include Boston University, Texas Tech University, University of Southern Indiana, Wellesley College, and many others. Each teacher earned 15 graduate credits for the seven week intensive course. Teachers spent much of their program in practice teaching classes but also spent substantial time on Chinese and Japanese pedagogy, textbook review, culture and context, and linguistic analysis. We wish this year’s group the greatest success!

Professor Arakawa Publishes Book

tom — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 06:59:07 +0000

ALLEX Japan collaborator Yohey Arakawa, Associate Professor of Japanese at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, published a new book about teaching Japanese for foreign students. Check it out! Insightful, pertinent, and humorous.