Professor Wei Gong teaches “Elementary Chinese I” (CHIN103) and “Fourth-Year Chinese I” (CHIN221) alongside directing co-curricular activities like the calligraphy and Mahjong clubs at Wesleyan University. When the pandemic hit in 2020, she created a blog to share her teaching methods and passion for linguistics internationally. The Argus sat down with her to speak about the teaching of Chinese and the community of international students at Wesleyan.
The Argus: What made you want to teach Chinese?
Wei Gong: I enjoy teaching. I went to Beijing Language and Culture University, where I majored in teaching Chinese as a second language. The name for the major was very long, and they’ve now changed it to International Chinese Education. After graduating from college, I started to work as a Chinese teacher. I started to teach students, mostly from the U.S. And then I went to Hong Kong in 2010 to go to graduate school in linguistics and language acquisition, because I’m just passionate about languages.
A: What do you enjoy about teaching a language?
WG: I’m fascinated by languages. I think every language is beautiful. I wish I could speak every language at a native proficiency level, because sometimes, here and there, I hear, “If you could have a superpower, what’d you want?” And I always say I want to have the ability to speak every language. Language has power. It’s beautiful. When I hear a language—even if I don’t understand it, like, if I hear Thai or Italian—I just think the melody and the sound itself is beautiful. I’m very passionate about seeing my students making those beautiful sounds. When the students gain the ability to speak a foreign language, it gives me a great feeling of achievement. One day I went to class, and one student asked me why I’m so happy every day. And I said, because I’m here in Chinese class with you.
A: What brought you to Wesleyan?
WG: I’ve taught in different institutions in the past, in China and in the U.S., but that was in 2020, during the pandemic. After the pandemic started, I had to try to find another job, because my previous position was not always renewable. It was renewable for several times, but eventually the language lecturers needed to find other jobs, and that’s when I started to look for new jobs. That’s the reason why I had to change my job, but the reason why I ended up being at Wesleyan is, I found that Wesleyan pays attention to teachers who do research. So I thought, oh, that’s me. I enjoy teaching and I enjoy doing research related to teaching Chinese.
A: Can you tell me about your research on the study of teaching Chinese?
WG: It’s everywhere. My research is generated or discovered from my classes. I have a WeChat public account (similar to a blog). You can post pictures, texts, and maybe short videos as well, but mainly just a script with pictures. When I see something in my class, I just make a note, and then I do a little research on why it’s like this. For example, if a student mispronounced some syllables or tone combinations, I would be wondering why they would make such errors, and what I can do to help students avoid making those errors in the future.
A: What are some topics you write about on the blog?
WG: Initially, I wanted to include all the L words like language, linguistics, literature, and I’m interested in film too, so I wanted to write something about “lens” because I wanted to have a series of L words, but gradually I noticed that the thing that interests me the most is still language. So most of the articles are about language and language teaching for now, but in the future, I’m hoping to expand to literature and film. “Puluo xiaozhong” [普罗小众, the name of the blog] actually is from an idiom, but I changed it a little bit. The original idiom “puluo dazhong” [普罗大众] means the general public, but I changed “da” [大, large] to “xiao ” [小, small], because I think not many people enjoy reading posts about linguistics or language teaching. My audience is a small group.
A: How has your approach to teaching changed over time?
WG: It’s definitely been modified and changing all the time, but I don’t think the main thing has ever changed, because I always wanted my students to really learn or even master the language. I know it’s pretty ambitious for someone to master a foreign language, but that’s our goal. When the students start from my class, I try to help them become independent learners. So after they leave Chinese classes and leave the University, they can still learn Chinese.
A: Every first-year student in Chinese is paired with an international student from China. How does this partnership with international students support student learning?
WG: I was amazed to find out that there are so many Chinese international students on campus who would love to connect with Chinese language students. And the Chinese language students are eager to connect with native speakers as well. That’s how we started the language partner program. It’s not an official program, but we have been doing this for many years. This year, I started a WeChat group with all the language partners paired with students in first-year and fourth-year Chinese, the years of the classes I’m teaching, so they can just directly message me when they think of something or if they have a question, which is more efficient than in the past, when we relied solely on emails.
A: I definitely agree that Wesleyan has a strong community of international students. Why do you think so many students from China choose to study here?
WG: I saw people discussing Wesleyan and liberal arts colleges in Xiaohongshu [小红书, a social media platform] a lot, and a lot of people said that they would like to experience an open, inclusive culture, while they can have opportunities to develop their real interests, the real self. And because of the open curriculum, they didn’t have to choose a major before they came here, so they can explore and find their real interest and real goal or future over time.
A: You direct Chinese co-curricular activities at Wesleyan. What are some of these activities?
WG: At first we only had a Chinese language table. But I thought that was not enough. Students were asking if there were any other activities, so we started the calligraphy workshop and Mahjong club. We tried Mahjong club in 2021. We just wanted to test if people would be interested. So we said, oh, let’s do it just once to see what happens. And it was surprisingly popular. And then we made it a bi-weekly Mahjong club, and it’s been popular among students, and even faculty members sometimes join if they have time. There’s calligraphy, Mahjong, and, of course, the festivals: Spring Festival and Mid-Autumn Festival. Those are two of the three main Chinese festivals. There’s another one called “Duanwu jie” [端午节, Dragon Boat Festival] in May, but in the lunar calendar, it will fall on the border between the end of spring semester and summer vacation, which makes it difficult to hold some activities. So every year we celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival, and in the spring, we celebrate the Spring Festival and Lantern Festival.
A: What are different activities for native speakers of Chinese on campus?
WG: Since I came here in 2020, I have seen more and more cultural activities and intercultural activities on campus. Every fall, there is the International Education Week, and in the spring, they have Power of Language Week. And they have native language events to celebrate your mother tongue, your native language, and also different countries or different cultures. Different ethnic groups also have their own celebrations. I see emails all the time. I wish I could attend all the events.
A: For clubs like Mahjong, are you looking to reach more students who aren’t necessarily studying Chinese, but are still interested in participating in the Chinese program’s activities?
WG: Although there are some Chinese characters in Mahjong, it’s basically numbers from 1 to 10, so they can have a cheat sheet on the table, so they can compare the numbers 1 to 10 with the characters on the Mahjong tiles. And calligraphy, although it’s based on Chinese characters, it’s also an art. Also, you can meditate through writing with a brush pen and ink, so it doesn’t require any Chinese language background to do those activities.
A: What is a surprising hobby you have?
WG: Cooking. I like to try different cuisines. I like to cook for families and friends. I think teaching and cooking are two main things that make me really happy. I just thought, food and language are beautiful. They can make me happy, and they have power. And different cuisines also represent different cultures. So it’s not just food to make you not hungry; it’s something that contains history, culture, and a lot of things behind it.
A: You said that languages have power. Can you elaborate on that?
WG: I think language can bring people together, and also it could divide people. So it’s important to use languages and to learn and understand languages. When students start to learn a foreign language, their aim might be to just go to another country and to visit, or to find a job where they can use the language skills, but I think maybe subconsciously, the student, when they learn the second or third, or fourth language, their mind will be reshaped by the language. They can change their perspective on viewing the world, other people, other cultures, and also themselves. I had lived in China since I was born for 25 years, and then I came to the States. It’s been another 14, 15 years now. So I think my mind and my view towards the world and other people and myself has evolved.
A: Is there a misconception that learning Chinese is difficult?
WG: If you hear people say that the Chinese language is difficult, I want to say it’s not true. It is linguistically distant from English or the Romance languages, but it doesn’t mean that it’s difficult. Chinese doesn’t have tense, gender, case, anything, so it’s intuitive. If you can master the pronunciation, yeah, you’re halfway there. So if you are interested in trying to learn Chinese, don’t be afraid. It’s not as difficult as people say. And the other thing is, there are, like, 1.4 billion people who speak Chinese. So if one can speak Mandarin, they can talk to more than 1.4 billion people.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Claire Farina can be reached at cfarina@wesleyan.edu.
“The Tongues of Wesleyan” is a series in the Features section that amplifies the voices of the University’s language teachers. These articles hope to celebrate all languages spoken across campus and spark dialogue around the dominance of English in higher education.
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