In pre-pandemic days, I imagined I would spend the second summer of my PhD program in Taiwan improving my Mandarin–which would also be an opportunity to talk to locals and get to know potential field sites for my dissertation fieldwork. But alas, with things still uncertain while I was applying to programs and with the recent COVID-19 outbreaks in Taiwan, summer 2021 in Taiwan was not to be. Instead I’m (remotely) attending a Chinese program hosted by the Center for Language Studies (CLS) at Beloit College (Beloit, WI, USA). As an intensive program, CLS promises a year of language studies in 7 weeks—delivered via a (virtual) immersion model. Virtual immersion is certainly not the same as being in Taiwan and still speaking, hearing, and reading Mandarin while navigating daily life beyond the classroom, but I hoped that through a model of virtual immersion, I could still become more comfortable with and instinctive in using Chinese. I want to take a moment today to reflect on what remote immersion looks like and how it’s going.
As one might suspect from the term “virtual immersion,” offline, we are left to our devices, free to converse and immerse in whatever language we want, but online, we are in a completely Chinese medium. Between our main class in the mornings, lunch with students at other levels, culture (and review) class in the afternoons, and one-on-one tutorials in the evenings, we are online 5 to 5.75 hours Mondays to Thursdays, plus about 2.5 hours on Fridays for reviewing and testing. Though there is the occasional fallback to an English word or phrase, teaching and participation is entirely in Chinese. At the third-year level, the inclusion of pinyin (English transliteration of Chinese characters) on materials is also minimal. In addition to attending classes, we have nightly assignments that include some combination of writing, speaking, new vocabulary, recitation, and grammar and vocab exercises. All of this together makes for a lot of Chinese in one day!
The Beloit CLS Chinese program can also be described as teaching/learning through a listening, speaking, reading, writing approach as we engage and practice all four of these skills while in the virtual classroom and while completing assignments. What I’ve enjoyed most about the way the program is taught is that our exposure to Chinese is not homogeneous. Take listening, for example: in addition to listening to instructors and fellow students, we also watch videos and movies, listen to songs, and listen to short articles. Between all this, the Chinese we hear is spoken by native speakers (who themselves have different backgrounds), heritage speakers (the category I fall into), and non-native speakers. In general when it comes to practicing the four skills of listening, speaking, read, and writing, the types of content we engage in and the activities we do are varied—some of the content we make use of is designed for Chinese language learners while others are not necessarily designed with learners in mind. Some of our online time is spent practicing new grammar, vocabulary, and structures, but a significant portion of our time is also spent on conversations and discussions. We also do role plays and play games. These more dynamic activities force us to be in the moment and to simultaneously listen, respond, and apply material we’ve learned.
Though virtual immersion can’t replicate the experience of living in a primarily Chinese-speaking locale, as it is being delivered by the CLS Chinese program, I would say that so far it’s doing a good job of preparing us students to be comfortable with our Chinese skills beyond the classroom and in a variety of settings.
Sylvia Ngo, PhD in Anthropology 2025
Sigur Center 2021 Asian Language Fellow
Beloit College, Wisconsin, USA
