LFCDS Chinese Teacher to Present at Summer Conference

Lake Forest Country Day School Mandarin Chinese teacher Diane Neubauer has been selected to present at a STARTALK conference at Hamilton College in New York this July. STARTALK is a national, federally funded program specifically designed to expand and improve learning and teacher training in less commonly-taught world languages. As an experienced teacher in LFCDS’ strong World Language Program, Diane has been invited to share with other Chinese language teachers about teaching Chinese with Comprehensible Input and Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling (TPRS®).  She uses Comprehensible Input-based teaching in all of her classes each day to increase student engagement and fluency in Mandarin Chinese. These methods are based on Second Language Acquisition research by Dr. Stephen Krashen and others.

According to Diane, it is essential that children are personally engaged and interested in the content of instruction through student-contributed ideas in discussion and readings in order to most efficiently retain the language and develop spontaneous interpersonal speaking skills. With this knowledge in mind, Diane often meshes pop culture or recognized subjects of interest into her lessons so that the children identify with the words, personally engage in the material, and actively participate in speaking the language. Once each student displays a certain mastery over the words and content presented orally, Diane introduces the same material in its written form in Chinese characters, building on the students’ previous comprehension to develop more robust understanding of the written language. Teachers facilitate the development of a low-anxiety, student-centered environment in which the teacher supports comprehension and use of the language by students of all academic levels. 

According to Diane, it is critical to recreate the best aspects of the environment in which native speakers learn the language. Therefore, Diane targets ninety percent of class content will be in student-comprehended Mandarin Chinese in her classroom so that the children are constantly immersed in the Mandarin Chinese language and can begin to recognize, familiarize, and become comfortable with the words that they learn and speak in multiple contexts. 

These are just some of the concepts and teaching methods that Diane will expound upon at the STARTALK conference this summer.