Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language to English Speaking Language Learners: Teachers’ Handbook

This project developed a handbook for teachers to assist in the instruction of Chinese as a foreign language. The handbook provides teachers with practical lessons for teaching Chinese to adult beginning language learners. The handbook is based on autoethnographic analyses of my own experiences or stories related to foreign language learning and teaching the Chinese language. Lessons topics were developed based on these stories. The handbook put forwards 6 lesson plans corresponding to 6 specific topics. The handbook is supported by 2 theories: the audio-lingual and communicative foreign language teaching approaches. Based on these 2 teaching approaches, the main idea embedded in the handbook is that teaching spoken language before teaching Chinese writing and grammar rules can help adult novices to learn Chinese more effectively and apply the language in practical situations. Thus, the lesson plans in the handbook are designed to develop the speaking skills of adult learners for communicative purposes. Unlike many current Chinese teaching materials in which spoken and written Chinese are taught together, this handbook creates an innovative teaching method that emphasizes spoken-Chinese language learning for beginner learners. The lesson plans, as examples, are expected to inspire more Chinese teachers to explore and promote innovative teaching lessons and methods

GERMANIUM-SILICON RATIOS AS A RECORD OF MID MIOCENE SILICA FLUXES TO THE OCEANS

A warm climate interval from 17 to 14.8 Ma is known as the Mid Miocene Climatic Optimum (MMCO). This interval was followed by a progressive cooling that continued to the Pleistocene. Several isotopic tracers indicate global climate and possibly weathering changes during the mid-Miocene. Germanium-silicon (Ge/Si) ratios are fractionated by silicate weathering processes and so can be an effective tracer of weathering intensity, and one potential consequence of a warm climate is increased silicate weathering intensity. We present a Ge/Si ratio record of 81 samples from IODP U1337A for ~12-18 Ma. The Ge/Si data for this interval do not show an overall temporal trend, but they are higher than present day ratio in seawater. The data show considerable scatter outside of analytical precision, and this scatter data may be in part result from diagenetic alteration. With a box model of the oceanic balance of Ge/Si and δ7Li we find that mid-Miocene weathering fluxes and weathering intensity were likely higher than at present, consistent with a warmer climate at that time