Office: CLE C208
Hours:
Phone: 721-7476
Email: karent@uvic.ca

[China]

My Chinese name is卜皚瑩.  I was born in China and educated in Taiwan where I received both my BA degree in history and a Teaching Certificate at the National Taiwan Normal University.  After teaching middle school for two years, I continued my studies at the University of British Columbia and received my MA in Asian Studies.  I was very lucky to major in Tang Dynasty History under the direction of Professor E. G. Pulleyblank at UBC.  The title of my thesis is "Empress Wei, Consort Shang-kuan & the Political Conflicts in the Reign of Chung-Tsung韋后及上官婉兒與中宗朝之政爭".

Teaching: I began to teach at the University of Victoria as a Sessional Instructor in 1985 and was appointed as a Senior Instructor in 1997.  I have taught Chinese culture and all levels of Chinese language courses for both the Native- and Non-Native-Speakers at UVic.  I mainly teach beginners' Chinese (PAAS 110 and 111) for the Non-Native-Speakers and fourth year Chinese (PAAS 410) for the Native-Speakers in recent years. It is most rewarding for me to lead the beginners to explore the Chinese culture while helping them to build a good foundation in their learning of this new language.  In the meantime, I also enjoy helping the Native-Speakers of Chinese to understand their native culture through various topics in PAAS 410, such as Chinese Films and Documentaries as well as the famous Chinese classic novel Hong Lou Meng (The Dream of the Red Chamber紅樓夢)

Others:
My research interests are closely related to my teaching responsibilities.  My current interests include Chinese language teaching through cultural perspectives and Hong Lou Meng.

My recent papers, “Collectivism vs. Individualism - Chinese Language Learning through Culture Comparison” can be found in the online journal of The Canadian TCSL Association (Collectivism vs. Individualism) and “中西文化对比在初级汉语教学中之应用 Culture Comparison in the First Year Chinese-as-a-foreign Language Class”, a joint work with colleague Jun Tian, is in pp. 615-620 of 第九届国际汉语教学讨论会论文选 Selected Essays of The 9th International Symposium on Chinese Language Teaching, Beijing, China (2010), Higher Education Press. 

As a winner of the 2010-2011 scholarship of the China-Canada Scholars’ Exchange Program (CCSEP), I am able to work on a project named "Understanding “Hong Lou Meng” through Digital Text Analysis".  I am hoping the results of this project would help me and my students to further develop our interests and understandings toward “Hong Lou Meng”.

Other than teaching and researching, I am also interested in the development of the field of Chinese language teaching in Canada.  I served as the Canadian Director of International Society for Chinese Language Teaching from 2005 to 2008 and I currently serve as the Vice-President (Secretary-General) of the Canadian Teaching Chinese as a Second Language Association (Canadian TCSL Association.)

Courses