The Vice Minister of Education for the People's Republic of China will visit the University of Colorado at Boulder campus Wednesday as the United States and China embark on a joint Internet-based language education project with the help of a CU-Boulder expert.
Zhang Xinsheng will tour the CU-Boulder campus and visit the university's Center for Spoken Language Research, the Anderson Language Technology Center and the College of Engineering's Integrated Teaching and Learning Lab.
The vice minister's visit comes as the United States and China begin to work together on the E-Language Project. The project will use computer-based technology to help students and educators learn a second language initially in English and Chinese, free of charge.
Professor Ron Cole, director of CU-Boulder's Center for Spoken Language Research and a fellow of the Institute of Cognitive Science, is among the technical consultants who were selected to help develop the E-Language Project.
The international partnership was initiated after several months of meetings between education officials from the two countries, and culminated in the October 2002 signing of a memorandum of understanding between U.S. Education Secretary Rod Paige and Zhou Ji, China's former vice minister of education.
"We have a project which will benefit our children's language learning today and subsequently help to build better mutual understanding and trust in the future," Ji said in a U.S. Dept. of Education press release.
The E-Language Project is designed to aid schools in both countries where foreign language education is not available.
In the United States, it will assist schools that don't have teachers with the skills to teach Chinese, as well as schools with large immigrant populations in need of English as a Second Language instruction. The program will be especially useful for teaching English at remote and rural Chinese schools.