Dr. Miao-Fen Tseng

Program Director and Key Trainer, Director of Institute of World Languages, Professor of Chinese

Dr. Miao-Fen Tseng is the Daniels Family NEH Distinguished Teaching Professor and the Inaugural Director of the Institute of World Languages at the University of Virginia (UVA). She has frequently given talks and workshops on Chinese language pedagogy and taught graduate-level courses under the auspices of various collaborative initiatives and professional development programs in the US and globally.  Her influential roles include, but are not limited to, Director of UVA STARTALK Teacher/Student Academy, Founder and President of the Chinese Language Teachers Association of Virginia (CLTA-VA), member of the CLTA Board of Directors, member of STARTALK Task Force, College Board consultant in AP Chinese, Academic Advisor and Senior Reviewer for AP Chinese Audit, and Evaluator of K-16 Chinese language programs and teacher preparation programs. She has received many accolades in recognition of her contribution to Chinese language education, among them the Albert Nelson Marquis Who’s Who Lifetime Achievement Award (2019), the STARTALK Award (2008-2019; 2021), the Jefferson Trust Award (2018), the Helen Warriner-Burke FLAVA Distinguished Service Award (2016), and the Jiede Empirical Research grant (2007) and Ron Walton Presentation Award (1998) by CLTA. She has written numerous peer-reviewed articles and six books, including AP Chinese Language and Culture Teacher’s Guide, Promoting Professionalism in Teaching AP Chinese (推动专业化的AP中文教学), and The Handbook of Tasks and Rubrics for Teaching Mandarin Chinese (Volume I, II, III), and Teach Chinese Online: An Essential Guide (co-authored with Yan Gao).  Her major interest lies in CFL curriculum design and pedagogy, task-based teaching, teacher training, and online teaching and technology.  

Dr. Pei-Ying Gosselin

Assistant Director and Mentor

Dr. Pei-Ying Gosselin is the Chinese program builder at The Archer School for Girls. This is her 10th year teaching Chinese language and culture to middle and high school students in Los Angeles. She devotes herself to designing a Chinese curriculum that highly motivates her students. Dr. Pei-Ying Gosselin integrates her Chinese classes with additional subjects to develop students’ interdisciplinary skills, utilizes technology to help students learn Chinese, and creates opportunities for students to apply their knowledge in real life scenarios. Since 2016, she has presented in several conferences demonstrating how to use projects, questions, technology, and communication programs to enhance and motivate students’ Chinese learning. Over the past two years, she has been profoundly influenced by Dr. Miao-fen Tseng’s ideas of using authentic materials and task-based projects for effective teaching. In educating our 21st century students, she strongly believes that teaching with authenticity along with task-based projects is critical in helping students navigate real-world situations.

Dr. Yan Gao

Instructional Designer and Co-trainer

Dr. Yan Gao teaches Mandarin Chinese at Henrico County Public Schools (HCPS). She is the recipient of the ACTFL Distant Learning Award for K-12 education and of the Quest Global Impact Award at the Virginia Commonwealth University in 2017. She is the educational technology coordinator and co-trainer at UVa Startalk Chinese Teacher and Student Academy since 2018. Since 2011, she has been making the Chinese language curriculum “real” by introducing telecollaboration, student blogging, curation projects, and other high-impact learning activities in the online environment. With many years of experience in integrating technology into teaching Chinese, she believes that technology integration will not only foster language acquisition but also help learners think more critically and boost interest and motivation in language and cultural studies.

Shi Jiang

Mentor

Ms. Shi Jiang is a certified PreK-12 Mandarin teacher in Ohio, and she currently teaches Chinese 1-5 and AP Chinese at the upper-division of University School in Cleveland. From 2014 to 2016, she taught all levels of Chinese classes at John Carroll University. As a language lover, Shi Jiang traveled to Chile in Latin America and taught Chinese to Spanish speakers in Santiago, Chile for a year. Ever since Ms. Jiang joined University School in 2018, she has been working on developing a Chinese language curriculum from K-8th grade and expanding the Chinese program at the upper school. As a strong advocate of using authentic materials in task-based projects, Shi Jiang focuses on designing student-centered activities using backward design and using 100% target language in a communicative context. Apart from teaching, Shi Jiang actively serves as the faculty advisor for the East Asian Platform at school, organizing events for students to honor their Asian identity and make their voices heard by the community. Since 2020, Ms. Jiang has served on the Global Citizenship Advisory Board at University School, leading both domestic and international trips to foster students’ global identities. As a strong believer in integrating technology into Chinese classes, Ms. Jiang also serves as the core member of the Online Academy at school. In May 2022, she was the recipient of the Ingersoll Award at University School.

Dan Song

Graduate Assistant

Dan Song is a middle and high school Mandarin teacher(currently working remotely). She has earned two Master's degrees, Bilingual Secondary Education and Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages. In 2016, she received a clear California teaching credential. In 2014 and 2017, she initiated the school-wide Mandarin program at American University Preparatory School and Mirman School respectively. Last fall, she started her doctoral program at the University of Iowa and continued teaching three Mandarin test prep classes with her students from Mirman remotely. In addition, she is an active AP Chinese reader and a certified ACTFL OPI tester, WPT rater, and AAPPL rater. She has authored 22 digital pre-AP and AP books on iChineseReader and contributed as an editor to the AP Pathway project.

Dr. Kathryn Murphy-Judy

Guest Speaker

Kathryn Murphy-Judy is a full professor of French at Virginia Commonwealth University, where she has been teaching online since 1998. Recognizing the importance of a community of practice for online language designers and teachers, she created and coordinated a national project for Basic Online Language Design and Delivery (BOLDD) in 2012.  As part of the ACTFL Distance Learning SIG, she helped create and launch the DL SIG Online Mentoring Program in concert with the National Foreign Language Resource Center in 2017. Most recently, she and her colleague, Dr. Victoria Russell, published Teaching Language Online: A Guide for Designing, Developing, and Delivering Online, Blended, and Flipped Language Courses (Routledge Taylor & Frances, 2020).