The Application Of STEM In Chinese Teaching Activities

With the increasing of China’s role on the world stage, there is a growing number of people want to know more about China. Therefore, the attention to Chinese language teaching increases in the worldwide. The United States is one of the countries that start teaching Chinese early. In recent years, America put more emphasis on STEM education. There are a few primary and secondary schools, as well as several Chinese programs, have applied STEM to Chinese teaching, which has attained the results expected.STEM is an abbreviation based on science, technology, engineering and mathematics. However, it is more than just a collection of the four subjects. Otherwise, STEM embodies the theoretical basis in practice that promotes the integration between disciplines. So far the research on how to effectively put STEM into use of Chinese teaching is quite limited. Given this, the author bases on practical experience on classroom instruction of "Startalk" Summer Camp at University of Hawaii at Manoa to prove that STEM application on Chinese teaching achieved high evaluation from the students and teachers by analyzing the investigation results.This thesis comprises five chapters.The foreword part first discusses the research background; the research content and the research significance; the main research methods and research theories in this article, as well as the research conclusion.Chapter 2 introduces the literature review that includes two parts, the domestic and abroad development of STEM in field of teaching and the current research on Chinese language summer camp.Chapter 3 introduces the overview of Startalk Summer camp. Secondly analyzes the teaching background of STEM instruction from three aspects that are teaching object, teaching objectives and teaching content.Chapter 4 is the specific application of STEM to Chinese teaching. Firstly, we state the feasibility and features of STEM instruction. Secondly we introduce a case of STEM instruction to show the teaching procedures. Then we analyze the investigation results gained from the students and teachers, as well as the completion status of the activities. In the last part of this chapter, we listed two significances by using STEM in Startalk summer camp.The last chapter proposes the problems and difficulties of adaption STEM to Chinese teaching, as well as the author’s reflective advices and suggestions. Also, it states the conclusion of this paper that applying STEM into Chinese teaching can increase the interest of students and get huge acceptance from both teachers and students. Besides, the applying has some shortcomings that we need to overcome.