EALL PhD alumni, Lee Moore, recently published an article with The China Project sharing his experience as a native English speaker who notices his first signs of dyslexia while learning Mandarin. Take a look at his article, “A dyslexic learning Chinese”.

A dyslexic learning Chinese

Congratulations to all!

Clay Chou, Assistant Professor at Goucher College

Jinsu Kim, Visiting Assistant Professor at Boston University

Heidi H. Shi: faculty (rank TBD) at Nanjing University of Technology

Chie Tokuyama, Visiting Assistant Professor at Carleton College

EALL Alumnus Spotlight

EALL Chinese Flagship and Economics alumnus, Bennet Voorhees, was recently featured in the “CAS Alumnus Spotlight.” Take a look how he turned his double major into a career, https://cas.uoregon.edu/2021/02/cas-alumnus-spotlight-bennet-voorhees-2/

Congratulations to Jun Lang, EALL Chinese Linguistics PhD student, for receiving the CLTA (Chinese Language Teachers Association USA) 2020-2021 Jiede Empirical Research Award for her project titled “Bridging linguistic theories, corpus research, and pedagogical practices in Chinese grammar teaching.” For a description of Jun’s research, see below.

The disconnection between linguistic theories/research and language pedagogy has been widely observed and lamented (Jing-Schmidt 2015; Tao 2016). This project aims to bridge linguistic theories supported by corpus research and pedagogical practices to explore the effects of a usage-based constructionist approach to teaching and learning notoriously challenging constructions (e.g. ba construction) in second language Chinese. A teaching intervention is designed based on corpus findings in Chinese linguistics (Jing-Schmidt et al. 2015; Xu 2014) and will be implemented to an experimental group of L2 Chinese learners. Teaching target constructions to this group will focus on form-meaning mappings, frequency of subtype use, prototypical examples, and real-life language use. My research methods will integrate quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis. Quantitative data will be collected from scores of a pre-test and post-test. The data then will be analyzed using statistical significance tests to examine whether there is an effect of the proposed teaching intervention. Qualitative data will be collected from semi-structured interviews.

References

Jing-Schmidt, Z. (2015). The place of linguistics in Chinese second language teaching and teacher training: toward a usage-based constructionist theoretical orientation. Journal of the Chinese Language Teachers Association, 50(3), 1-22.

Jing-Schmidt, Z., X. Peng & J. Chen. (2015). From Corpus Analysis to Grammar Instruction: Toward a usage-based constructionist approach to constructional stratification. Journal of the Chinese Language Teachers Association, 50(2), 109-138.

Tao, H. (2016). Integrating Chinese linguistic research and language teaching and learning: An Introduction. In Tao, Hongyin (Ed.), Integrating Chinese linguistic research and language teaching and learning, xiii-xviii. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Xu, Y. (2014). A corpus-based functional study of shi…de constructions. Chinese Language and Discourse, 5(2), 146-184.

By Erik Campuzano

Dalyn Van Laanen has “probably old enough to be your dad” jokingly written on his Instagram bio. At 27 years old, Dayln is the oldest person in his Japanese 303 class, but he still achieves success at the University of Oregon. Dalyn is a Japanese major and started learning Japanese seven years ago when he started working in Osaka, Japan.

Dayln moved from Sacramento, California, to Salem, Oregon, during middle school. He eventually graduated from Oregon State University in 2016 equipped with a bachelor’s in marketing and landed a job at Montbell.

Montbell is a Japanese company with U.S headquarters originally located in Portland, and it needed someone to go to Japan from the states. The company chose Dayln. So, he would visit Montbell’s headquarters located in Osaka for months at a time.

Dayln loved Osaka because he could explore a culture other than America’s. However, work weeks could sometimes consist of up to 60 hours, which led to him feeling burnt out of the job. Dayln left Osaka for a marketing job in America, but he felt like something was missing.

“I was happy with having a job and happy being content with the money I was making, but I wasn’t excited about working,” said Dalyn.

He wanted to bring Japanese back into his life because he missed Japan. He searched for a way to learn Japanese in America and found University of Oregon’s unique four-year Japanese program. When he found it, he decided to not renew his job contract and came to study Japanese at the University of Oregon.

Dayln placed into fourth-year Japanese when he arrived at the University of Oregon. However, he decided to take third-year Japanese because he wanted to focus on certain areas. Dayln is now two terms into the third-year Japanese program and sees improvements. Dayln believes that University of Oregon hiring people with a strong background and expertise in Japanese plays a big role in his learning.

The East Asian Language and Literature (EALL) department at UO has many native speakers of Japanese, many of whom are from Japan and have specific degrees in education and teaching Japanese. This was important to Dayln because it showed that UO has the faculty and resources he needs to be successful.

“I thought it was pretty impressive that we actually had the resources here at UO. … I know Ikei sensei graduated in education in Kyoto,” said Dayln. “So, I mean that kind of stuff seemed pretty important to me.”

Outside of class, Dayln takes advantage of opportunities available at the University of Oregon. Dayln works at University of Oregon’s Academic English for International Students (AEIS) program. The AEIS program helps international students from 102 countries develop their English while they take courses at the University of Oregon.

Students from Japan are one of the biggest international student populations at the University of Oregon. By working at AEIS, Dayln has connected with the Japanese population at the University of Oregon.

But Dayln utilizes more than just the AEIS center on campus. Places on campus like the Mills International Center and student groups like the Japanese Student Organization let students further interact in cultural and language exchanges.

Resources like this exist not only for students studying Japanese, but for any student looking to engage with another culture. By utilizing University of Oregon’s resources, Dayln is getting closer
to his personal goal: to achieve something he could feel proud about.

“That’s the whole point. I came back here just to be able to feel like hey, I did it,” said Dayln. “My four years or so that I’ve been back and forth to Japan in my life finally actually amount to
something. I have something to show for it.”

Dayln believes that Japan is trying to become a more international country and wants to capitalize on that. After he finishes his Japanese studies, he wants to work in a company somewhere in the United States where he can apply his unique skillset of Japanese and marketing skills.

Dayln is almost done with Japanese 303 and plans to take fourth year Japanese next year. Although he may be older than most of his classmates, that has not stopped him from being a successful
duck at the University of Oregon.

Dylan Van Laanen

Erik Campuzano

Lucy Gubbins (’12), a UO alumna who graduated with a minor in Japanese, was recently featured in the fall edition of Oregon Quarterly, the UO alumni magazine. Gubbins, her EALL faculty mentor Kaori Idemaru, and Peipei Wei (PhD ’16), recently published a paper together in the journal Language and Speech. Gubbins currently works in Philadelphia for an e-commerce website. She credits her post-graduation professional success to her “academic research experience as an undergraduate.” Congratulations to Lucy! For the article, see here.

On May 20, University of Oregon’s chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, Alpha of Oregon, released the names of undergraduates elected to Phi Beta Kappa in 2018. Phi Beta Kappa is the oldest and most prestigious academic honors society in the United States (see here for information about the UO chapter). Among the elected were eight students, listed below, who are completing majors or minors in the department of East Asian Languages and Literatures. Congratulations to all!

Chloe Duerr (Japanese, major)
James Holste (Japanese, minor)
Jacqueline Huaman (Japanese, major)
Jessica Johnson (Japanese, minor)
Jordan Lewis (Japanese, minor)
Gamp Liang (Japanese, major)
Lina Mochizuki (Japanese, major)
Emily Wu (Chinese, minor)

EALL is excited to announce that Jacqueline Huaman is a recipient of the Humanities Undergraduate Research Fellowship (HURF) and University of Oregon Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP) Award!

Jacqueline is undertaking a thesis project that investigates gendered features in Japanese. Her broad goal is to examine whether the gendered nature of Japanese, in particular the idea of “female language,” reflects a normative language ideology or the reality of language use. Her research analyzes represented gender through idol music and gender in practice through naturally occurring conversation data, while also incorporating interviews with Japanese speakers to show their understanding of gendered language.  She plans to present the work at UO Undergraduate Research Forum and the Northwest Linguistics Conference.

Sara King, a first-year graduate student in EALL, focusing on Japanese linguistics, has received the Promising Scholar award for academic year 2017-18. The University of Oregon Graduate School gives Promising Scholar Awards to in-coming graduate students on a competitive basis. We are very excited that Sara received this important award.

Chie Tokuyama, a fourth-year graduate student in EALL, received the same award in AY 14-15.

Xinjia Peng, a PhD student in Chinese Linguistics, has been selected as a recipient of a College of Arts and Sciences Dissertation Research Fellowship for the 2016-2017 academic year. This is a highly competitive award honoring the best and most promising graduate students.
Congratulations, Xinjia!