Advanced Chinese Reader

Grant Details

Amount: 2500.00

Project Start Date: 12/31/97

Status: Completed (Currently Active)

Project Type:
Campus Based

Languages: Chinese

Project Level:
Advanced

Project Skills:
Cultural Awareness
Reading

Institutions Involved:
University of Pennsylvania

Primary Contact:
Maiheng Dietrich (maiheng@sas.upenn.edu)

632 Williams Hall
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia , PA 19104-6305
Phone: 215-898-0303

Development of a reader for fourth-year Chinese intended to meet students' interests in many different genres, topics, and periods of modern Chinese prose.

Project Materials

España Hoy

Grant Details

Amount: $9,330

Project Start Date: 07/01/06

Status: In Progress (under development)

Project Type:
Campus Based

Languages: Spanish

Project Level:
Intermediate

Project Skills:
Cultural Awareness
Speaking
Listening
Reading
Writing

Institutions Involved:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Primary Contact:
Margarita Ribas Groeger (mgroeger@mit.edu)

14N-220
M.I.T.
Cambridge , MA 02139
Phone: 617-253-4778

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Secondary Contact:
Solivia Márquez
smarquez@mit.edu
14N-222 Foreign Languages and Literatures M.I.T. Cambridge, MA 02139

España Hoy is a Web-based unit that examines life and culture in today’s Spain, building on and updating our 1998 Consortium project, España de cerca . España Hoy consists of a new set of video interviews with a variety of people in different regions of Spain talking about life, society and culture in today’s Spain. These interviews will be edited, annotated and cross-referenced. Additional contextual materials, (newspaper and magazine articles, surveys, advertisements, public service campaigns ads, songs, radio reports, photographs, maps, additional digital video and other web links) will be added to provide a more general perspective to the personal viewpoints expressed by the interviewees. While this project aims to bring up to date many of the basic topics that formed the core of España de cerca, it will also address other issues confronting Spanish society today, such as growing immigration, international terrorism, rapid urbanization and its ecological consequences.

Project Materials

Generation in Change

Grant Details

Amount: $3,900

Project Start Date: 06/01/06

Status: In Progress (under development)

Project Type:
Campus Based

Languages: Chinese

Project Level:
Intermediate

Project Skills:
Cultural Awareness
Speaking
Listening
Reading
Writing

Institutions Involved:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Primary Contact:
Tong Chen (tongchen@mit.edu)

14N-330
M.I.T.
Cambridge , MA 02139
Phone: 617-253-0109

The website will consist of 100 video segments plus difficult words, phrases and grammar points culled from these segments. The material will allow our students to study the influences of social change and economic development on the values, morals, and daily life of Chinese students their age as well as the consequent changes to their philosophies of life and their educational experience. Additionally, the material will give our students the opportunity to study the experience of Chinese parents and grandparents regarding these topics before and after the open door policy when China shifted its attitude to the rest of the world as well as reveal the attitudes of the older generations towards the younger generation’s changes. The website will be a rich resource, giving our students a variety of things to explore. Our students will engage video and other media to develop their interpretations and understanding of Chinese culture, modern society, economics, and family relations. Our students will be able to save the visual materials needed in folders for their own research, projects, papers, and presentations.

Project Materials

Web based material for self-studying the Kansai dialect

Grant Details

Amount: $7,667

Project Start Date: 05/31/06

Status: In Progress (under development)

Project Type:
Campus Based

Languages: Japanese

Project Level:
Intermediate

Project Skills:
Cultural Awareness
Listening

Institutions Involved:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Primary Contact:
Ikue Shingu (ikue@mit.edu)

77 Massachusetts Ave.
Rm.14N-232
Cambridge , MA 02139
Phone: 617-253-3543

The purpose of this project is to develop web-based self-study material related to the Kansai dialect, a regional dialect spoken by over 20 million people in Japan. This proposed product aims to 1) assist students who wish to communicate with local Kansai people at work or in daily life, to 2) help students learn to appreciate diversity in Japan; through the understanding of the Kansai local culture and local identity of Kansai people. The proposed product targets English speakers who have studied college-level Japanese for two or more years or those of intermediate to advanced level proficiency. The website will consist of 1) the basic factual information about the Kansai culture and characteristics of the Kansai dialect, followed by 2) the linguistic-focused chapters for the purpose of the acquisition of the basic grammar and functional expressions that are essential for survival level communication, and 3) situational/thematic chapters for the exploration of cultural aspects of Kansai through their communication. In the situational/thematic chapters, users will be exposed, through video clips taped in Kansai, to unscripted conversations among local people in various settings and interviews and debates on various topics. Linguistic chapters will contain not only descriptive texts, but audio resources attached to the sentences and drills, and video-clips from interviews with local people for the purpose of comprehensive exercises.

Project Materials

Looking for Belgium: Contemporary arts as a gate to Belgian culture and history

Grant Details

Amount: $6,267

Project Start Date: 05/31/06

Status: In Progress (under development)

Project Type:
Campus Based

Languages: French

Project Level:
Beginner
Intermediate
Advanced

Project Skills:
Cultural Awareness
Speaking
Listening
Reading
Writing

Institutions Involved:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Primary Contact:
Cathy Culot (cculot@MIT.EDU)

77 Massachusetts Avenue
14N-427
Cambridge , MA 02139
Phone: 617-253-3462

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Secondary Contact:
Kurt Fendt
fendt@mit.edu
Foreign Languages and Literatures 77 Massachusetts Avenue. Building 16-635B Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge MA 02139-4307

trometer@mit.edu
Ruth Trometer,Director Language Learning and Resource Center 16-657 MIT Cambridge MA 02139

This project will be repository of digital and scanned images, written documents, video fragments, songs and interviews that will introduce our students to Belgian culture and history through Belgian contemporary arts. Artists will be chosen within the visual arts (painting, sculpture, video art, architecture and photography), the ninth art or art of comic strips as well as those working in music, film, theatre, dance, literature and those preserving the traditions, gastronomy and popular culture in Belgium. The main scope of the repository will be artists who are currently active or who have created their work in the last decades of the 20th century. These contemporary artists will be the starting point for different chains of references to Belgian culture and artists. Indeed, this project will present contemporary materials as links to Belgian history, culture and artists of the past. It will give students access to a unique culture with different influences, mainly the French, the Flemish and the German communities living together in Belgium and each contributing to what Belgian culture represents. Therefore, artists from the three communities will be included in the repository. The materials will be organized within a traditional MetaMedia archive, which will include the different themes around which the classes will be structured, and each theme will feature the artists most relevant to the theme being studied. The selection of artists within each theme is not exhaustive. This will allow students to make their own selection of materials to be included under a theme and to assume the role of an online curator creating different links between artists.

Project Materials