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STARTALK Chinese Summer Academy 2025

The Carolina Asia Center will host a summer camp on July 13-26, 2025, supported by the STARTALK program. This Chinese Summer Academy for high-school aged Chinese-language learners from Novice-High to Intermediate-Mid levels is themed “Embracing Cultural Diversity in Our Community.”

The 2025 Carolina Asia Center STARTALK Chinese Student Program intends to help high school Chinese language learners develop an understanding and appreciation of the cultural diversity in the community and share what they have learned through our program with international visitors. The program also aims at developing students’ target language proficiency and increasing their motivation to learn Chinese through the integration of cultural elements in task designs and meaningful socialization in the community. Integrating culture, content, and language, our rich curriculum will cultivate students’ ability to produce the target language in a culturally immersed environment and develop intercultural communicative competence. To ensure the success of all student participants regardless of their background and experience, our curriculum design is integrated with multimodal learning plans that enhance differentiation and address the needs of various learning styles. Twenty-four students in Grades 9-12 at the Chinese proficiency level between Novice-High and Intermediate-Mid will be selected to join the program. Featuring 104 instructional hours, the two-week residential program will provide various resources and opportunities to assist with students’ learning, including a wide range of authentic materials, connections with native Chinese speakers in the community, and community-based learning through field trips to a local Chinese restaurant, Asian supermarket, community garden, and art museum. Throughout the program, the instructional team will provide continued guidance and feedback to the student participants and encourage reflective learning and community building.

HOW TO APPLY

We welcome all students in North Carolina who meet the grade level (9-12) and target language proficiency (Novice-High to Intermediate-Mid) criteria of the program to apply, regardless of prior STARTALK program participation.

High school students who want to join this program can apply by clicking this link. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis until the spots are filled. Applicants are strongly encouraged to apply before November 30th.

 

Startalk Chinese Summer Academy 2025, Embracing Cultural Diversity in Our Community flyer

 

PROGRAM PERSONNEL

Program Director

The program director, Dr. Lini Ge Polin, is a Teaching Associate Professor in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Polin received her Ed.D. in Curriculum and Instruction from the School of Education at UNC-Chapel Hill, and M.A. in Journalism and M.A. in Teaching Chinese as a Second Language from the University of Iowa. She has extensive experience in teaching Chinese as a second language in the U.S. and is a recipient of the Student Undergraduate Teaching Award at UNC Chapel Hill. Polin is a certified ACTFL OPI tester in Chinese. Her teaching strengths include technology-enhanced curriculum design, task-based instruction, and performance-based assessment using ACTFL proficiency standards. Polin served as the Chair of the ACTFL Research Special Interest Group and currently serves as the President of the Chinese Language Teachers Association of North Carolina. Her research has been published in top-tier journals and presented at professional conferences of the American Educational Research Association, ACTFL, FLANC, CLTA-US, among others. Polin has rich experience with the STARTALK program. In the summer of 2021, she served as a mentor teacher in the UNC-Greensboro STARTALK Chinese Teacher Program, and also taught in the Winston-Salem State University STARTALK Student Program. She was also program director of the STARTALK Chinese Teachers Program at UNC-Chapel Hill in 2023.

 

Assistant Director and Instructor

The assistant director and instructor, Luoyi Cai, is a Teaching Associate Professor in Chinese in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at UNC-Chapel Hill. She teaches non-heritage Chinese language courses from elementary to advanced levels and the Chinese LAC (Chinese Language Across the Curriculum) course. Cai served as the President of CLTA-NC from Sept. 2022 to Aug. 2024 and was newly elected as a board member of CLTA-US. Before joining the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at UNC-CH, Cai had taught at the University of Virginia (UVA), the Chinese Summer School at Middlebury, and several intensive language programs abroad, including the UVA-Shanghai Summer Program, CET-Shanghai Program, and CLS Summer Program. In addition, Cai has been actively involved in teacher training in recent years. From 2018 to 2021, she served as the mentor teacher for the UVA STARTALK Program. She was the lead instructor of the 2022-2024 CAC STARTALK Chinese Teacher Program. Her main research interests include Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) Curriculum design and practice, Chinese LAC course development, and integrating films and technology tools in the Chinese language classroom.

 

Grades 9-12 Pedagogical Expert

The K-12 pedagogical expert, Qiang (John) Chen, is a National Board-Certified language teacher with over 30 years of teaching experience. He is one of the piloting instructors of online Chinese instruction in North Carolina. Currently, Chen is a Chinese instructor at Enloe Magnet High School, Raleigh, North Carolina. He designed the Chinese curriculum from level 1 to level 6 including AP and IB programs for the local school system and has been teaching these courses ever since. Chen has received many teaching awards, including the Yale University Outstanding Educator Award in 2019, and the Chicago University Excellent Educator Award in 2020, among others. Chen has extensive experience working with the STARTALK programs. He has been working as a site visitor and a proposal reader for STARTALK Central since 2010 and as the Lead Instructor for STARTALK Chinese Summer Institute at several universities. In addition, he is an AP Chinese reader and a reader for Chinese teachers’ license exams for the College Board. He has worked as a mentor for teachers and conducted teacher training sessions at many institutes, including the STARTALK Chinese Teachers Program at UNC-Chapel Hill in 2023.

 

Lead Instructor

Bonnie Chunmeng Wang will serve as lead instructor. Wang is the Assistant Director of DEE (Diversity, Equity and Engagement) and teaches Upper School Chinese at Durham Academy in Durham, North Carolina. Wang currently serves as the K-12 representative on the board of the Chinese Language Teachers Association, U.S.A., and a board member of Southern Conference on Language Teaching (SCOLT) and FLANC. She was awarded 2019 Teacher of the Year by FLANC and served as the President of CLTA-NC during 2019-2021. Wang holds an M.A. in Linguistics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has taught in the UVA STARTALK student program in 2019. In 2021, Wang taught in WSSU STARTALK student program and served as a mentor teacher for the UNCG STARTALK teacher program. Wang is a certified ACTFL OPI tester in Mandarin Chinese and has presented at teacher training workshops in various topics at multiple conferences including FLANC, SCOLT, CLTA and ACTFL. She was a mentor teacher at the STARTALK Chinese Teachers Program at UNC-Chapel Hill in 2023.

 

Instructor

Yi-Wen Liu will serve as an instructor. She holds a master’s degree from National Taiwan Normal University in Teaching Chinese as a Second Language. Currently serving as the past president of CLTA-NC and the president of the Foreign Language Association of North Carolina (FLANC), she dedicates tremendous efforts in making professional development opportunities more accessible to local teachers. Under her leadership, both CLTA-NC and FLANC hosted annual conferences and workshops virtually to create a platform for language educators to be connected and informed of recent language teaching trends. Her teaching experience includes both higher education and secondary levels, including Middlebury College summer Chinese school, Wake Forest University, Philo Academy, Middlebury Interactive Summer Academy, and Salem Academy. In 2016, she established the Chinese program at Salem Academy. Liu is currently teaching Upper School Mandarin at Ravenscroft School in Raleigh, North Carolina, where she also serves as the World Language department chair. She is also a certified ACTFL OPI tester in Chinese. Liu participated in the 2015 CHS STARTALK program, and later organized conferences highlighting different STARTALK programs in the Southern region. She also served as a mentor teacher at the STARTALK Chinese Teachers Program at UNC-Chapel Hill in 2023.