The Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures (DEALL) at The Ohio State University offers both an M.A. and a Ph.D. degree in Chinese Linguistics, with students advised by two graduate faculty members, Professors Marjorie Chan and Zhiguo Xie. (Also see the information on our Chinese Linguistics Program here and further information on the DEALL website.)
Given our graduate programs — M.A. and Ph.D. in Chinese linguistics — we offer a full range of graduate courses in Chinese linguistics to students in our department. These courses also attract graduate students in other units such as Linguistics, Speech and Hearing Sciences, Education, etc.
In addition to graduate Chinese linguistics courses, I have also taught an undergraduate course on Chinese linguistics (viz., Chinese 580, which is now renumbered as Chinese 4380). Since conversion to the semester system, we have added three more undergraduate Chinese linguistics courses to the inventory of courses for undergraduate students. In addition to 4000-level courses in Chinese linguistics that are designed for undergraduate students, 5000-level are typically also open to undergraduate students, but with the courses offered under a different class number.
Chinese linguistics faculty also contribute to the teaching of culture courses. One of these is Traditional Chinese Culture (Chinese 2231) and the other Chinese Opera (Chinese 5474). The Chinese Opera course introduces the two major, national operatic traditions, kunqu and Beijing (Peking) opera, plus several regional operatic traditions, namely, Huangmei (‘yellow plum’), Zhejiang Yue, and Guangdong Yue (Cantonese) operas, as sample regional varieties from China’s rich heritage in traditional performing arts.
In Autumn Semester 2013, in addition to my regular course load, I also served as faculty supervisor in our offering, for the very first time at Ohio State, a course on Conversational Cantonese for Mandarin Speakers (open to both learners of Chinese and native Mandarin speakers). A new, two-course sequence of conversational Cantonese was proposed and approved late Autumn Semester 2014: Chinese 4301 – Conversational Cantonese for Mandarin Speakers I, and Chinese 4302: Conversational Cantonese for Mandarin Speakers II. The first offering of Chinese 4301 was in Spring Semester 2015. We have since then tried to offer Chinese 4301 each spring. In Spring 2021 and 2022, Chinese 4301 was taught as a Distance Learning (DL) course due to the pandemic. It returned to in-person mode in Spring 2023 for students on the OSU campus, while it continued to be available online via Zoom through CourseShare — since Spring 2021 — to students at the University of Michigan and other Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA) institutions. In April 2020, a new fund, the Cantonese Gamluhk Fund (Fund Number: 316950): https://www.giveto.osu.edu/makeagift/?fund=316950, was created to support the offering of Cantonese language courses (and other related academic programs in the future. Our aim is for the fund to continue to grow to become an endowment fund. We hope to offer at least Chinese 4301 on an annual basis, with aims to be able to offer conversational Cantonese as a two-course sequence (Autumn & Spring) annually on campus at OSU and virtually via Zoom for
All of our courses at OSU are taught in multimedia classrooms, integrating course assignments and classroom activities with computer technology. In addition, post-pandemic, for some activities I have occasionally made use of blended instruction, combining the use of the physical classroom with the virtual classroom.
Links:
- My Courses – from Autumn 2015 to the present
- Minor in Chinese Linguistics – Foreign, Second and Multilingual Language Education Program
Ph.D. Requirements for a Minor in Chinese Linguistics in the FSMLE Program (pdf file, updated 09.16.2015) - Graduate Interdisciplinary Specialization in Second Language Studies (GIS in SLS)
- Graduate Interdisciplinary Specialization in Chinese Cultural Studies (GIS in CCS)