Creating Case Studies Teaching Materials for Japanese for Professions Classes

Grant Details

Amount: $1,000.00

Project Start Date: 12/31/05

Status: In Progress (under development)

Project Type:
Campus Based

Languages: Japanese

Project Level:
Advanced

Project Skills:

Institutions Involved:
University of Pennsylvania

Primary Contact:
Tomoko Takami (ttakami@sas.upenn.edu)

803 Williams Hall, 255 South 36th Street
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia , PA 19104-6305
Phone: 215.573.3640

The objective of this project is to develop new teaching materials for Business Japanese classes, specifically, for the series of Japanese for Professions classes (JFP) which is currently offered at the University of Pennsylvania. The new materials employ the case method, which is frequently used in the business schools, but have just started to be adopted in business language classes. The project will include preparations of the materials, i.e., research of companies and situations and create cases which will become the foundation of teaching language materials.

Material Development for Teaching the Shona Language at the University of Pennsylvania

Grant Details

Amount: 2500

Project Start Date: 12/31/05

Status: In Progress (under development)

Project Type:
Campus Based

Languages: Shona

Project Level:
Beginner

Project Skills:
Cultural Awareness
Speaking
Listening
Reading
Writing

Institutions Involved:
University of Pennsylvania

Primary Contact:
Esau Mavindidze (ejmavind@sas.upenn.edu)

715-716 Williams Hall, 255 South 36th Street
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia , PA 19104-6305
Phone: 215-898-6039

The purpose of this project is to develop curriculum materials to enhance the teaching of the Shona language at the University of Pennsylvania. I have a 2 tier approach to developing the materials. In the first part of the project, I created exercises intended to give an understanding of the Shona language and culture to elementary level students. The type of exercises assumes the student has little or no knowledge of the language, and focuses on general, but socially useful, conversations that are explored through dialogues. I have also created 15 Shona units for the Online Multimedia Vocabulary and Pronunciation Project, which was carried out under the guidance of Dr. Audrey Mbeje. The project provides Shona vocabulary items that are useful‎ in different situations and is intended to provide students with a vocabulary and pronunciation guide.

Form-focused Jeopardy Games for Business Chinese

Grant Details

Amount: $1,500.00

Project Start Date: 12/31/05

Status: In Progress (under development)

Project Type:
Campus Based

Languages: Chinese

Project Level:
Advanced

Project Skills:
Speaking
Listening
Reading
Writing

Institutions Involved:
University of Pennsylvania

Primary Contact:
Fangyuan Yuan (fangyuan@sas.upenn.edu)

East Asian Languages & Civilizations, 847 Williams Hall
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia , PA 19104-6305
Phone: 215-898-0303

This project aims to develop 20 sets of form-focused exercises in the format of the Jeopardy Games using Microsoft word and PowerPoint for the in-class use of Business Chinese (CHIN 382) in the spring semester. There entail two goals for this project: 1) to provide the opportunities for students to focus on linguistic forms in an engaging manner; 2) to prepare students linguistically so that they can perform the uncoming meaning-focused tasks more accurately, fluently and appropriately.

Supplementing the Elementary Italian curriculum with listening exercises based on film clips

Grant Details

Amount: $750

Project Start Date: 12/31/05

Status: In Progress (under development)

Project Type:
Campus Based

Languages: Italian

Project Level:
Beginner

Project Skills:
Listening

Institutions Involved:
University of Pennsylvania

Primary Contact:
Helen McFie-Simone (smcfie@sas.upenn.edu)

Department of Romance Languages, 521 Williams Hall
255 South 36th Street
Philadelphia , PA 19104-6305
Phone: 215.898.8449

This project arises out of the need for appropriate listening material for first-semester Italian at the University of Pennsylvania. The text currently used, "Qui Italia", published in Italy, is lacking in helpful listening exercises. Film clips will serve to provide a much richer input than voices from a cd or a cassette and will enable students to immediately understand at least the context in which the dialogue takes place. The use of clips will be followed up by a viewing of the entire film, which will be much easier to understand in its entirety because of the work done previously with the clips. Because this course is taught in multiple sections, the material will be made available on a website for the purpose of making it readily available to all instructors.

Development of a website with audio-visual materials for Spanish 202 (Advanced Spanish)

Grant Details

Amount: $2,500.00

Project Start Date: 12/31/05

Status:

Project Type:
Campus Based

Languages: Spanish

Project Level:
Advanced

Project Skills:
Listening

Institutions Involved:
University of Pennsylvania

Primary Contact:
Victoria Garcia-Serrano (vgs@sas.upenn.edu)

Romance Languages, 521 Williams Hall
255 South 36th Street
Philadelphia , PA 19104-6305
Phone: 215-573-2373

For the enhancement of Spanish 202 (Advanced Spanish), I propose the creation of a website containing clips from full-length and short films, and TV advertisements. The clips are related to the content of the textbook currently used in Spanish 202 but they could work as well with other textbooks and at other levels of instruction. The website will be accessible by Spanish 202 instructors only.