Title: Languages Across the Curriculum: Models for Bridging Language and Content
Presenter: Jennifer Li-Chia Liu

Abstract: 
With the goal for world language educators to build translingual and transcultural competence (MLA, 2007), how do we collaborate to bridge the gap between content and language? This talk describes an initiative that the speaker delivered at Harvard University regarding the design and implementation of content-based language courses such as Harvard’s Chinese in the Humanities and Chinese in the Social Sciences. This talk explicates the challenges and opportunities in content-based instruction (CBI), and elucidates content-based course models, curriculum design, instructional strategies, assessment options, and implications for teacher development. Specific examples of connecting language study with disciplines such as history, modern as well as vernacular literature, and cinema are offered.

Bio: 
Jennifer Li-Chia Liu is Professor of the Practice of Language Pedagogy and Director of the Chinese Language Program in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University, as well as Director of the Harvard Beijing Academy. At Harvard, she chairs the Foreign Language Advisory Group and serves on the Asia Center Council and the Executive Committee of the Fairbank Center. She has worked in Chinese pedagogy for 33 years, focusing on teacher training, program design and assessment, curriculum and material development, and technology-enhanced language learning. Prior to taking up her position at Harvard, she was a full professor at Indiana University (1992-2011) and a founding director of its Center for Chinese Language Pedagogy and Chinese Flagship Center (2008-2011). Dr. Liu was President of the Chinese Language Teachers Association from 2006 to 2007 and served as Chair of the SAT Chinese Test Development Committee from 2014 to 2017. Her publications include “The Effects of Tone Training on Tone Perception Accuracy in Chinese Language Classrooms” (2019), and a series of books: Encounters I-II (Indiana University Press, 2010), Connections I-II (Indiana University Press, 2004), and Interactions I-II (Indiana University Press, 1998).