Hang Du
Office
Voter Hall 106
Tel
(802) 443-5257
Email
hdu@middlebury.edu
Office Hours
SPRING 2024: Mondays 3:45-5:15PM, Thursdays 11:00AM-12:30PM, or by appointment.

Hang Du, a native of Beijing, has been calling the Green Mountain State home since 2004. She holds an MA in Linguistics, and a Ph.D. in Second Language Acquisition from the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. Program in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching (SLAT) at the University of Arizona. Prior to joining the Chinese Department in 2004, she had taught first-year Chinese in the Middlebury Chinese School for two summers in 2001 and 2002. Her language teaching includes over 20 years’ experience teaching beginning Chinese, second-year Chinese, and senior seminars about contemporary Chinese culture and society for students who have returned from study abroad in China, using all authentic material written/produced by and for the Chinese people. In addition, Hang Du has had extensive training in giving the Chinese Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) following guidelines created by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL). She has also designed standardized test items for American Councils for International Education to assess students’ Chinese proficiency in the Flagship programs in China.

Hang Du’s main research area is the acquisition of Chinese as a second language. Her major publications include the book The Acquisition of the Chinese ba-construction (2006), and a number of articles published in top journals in the field of Second Language Acquisition, such as: “The Development of Chinese Fluency during Study Abroad in China” (The Modern Language Journal, 2013); “American College Students Studying Abroad in China: Language, Identity and Self-presentation” (Foreign Language Annals, 2015); “The Complexity of Study Abroad: Stories from Ethnic Minority American Students in China” (Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 2018); and “Grammatical and Lexical Development During Study Abroad: Research on a Corpus of Spoken L2 Chinese” (Foreign Language Annals, 2022). She has served as a peer reviewer for many major journals in her field, such as the Modern Language JournalApplied LinguisticsForeign Language Annals, and Journal of Chinese Language Teachers Association.

Hang Du has been involved in the Linguistics initiative at Middlebury since its inception, and has served as the Director of the program for two years (2016-2018). Every year she teaches Chinese/Linguistics 270 (Chinese Sociolinguistics), which satisfies requirements for both the Chinese major and the Linguistics minor. She also teaches a first-year seminar titled “First Language Acquisition” on a regular basis.

Courses Taught

Course Description

Beginning Chinese
This course is an introduction to Mandarin (guoyu or putonghua). The course begins with simple words and phrases, the pronunciation and cadences of Mandarin, romanization, Chinese characters, and simple vocabulary items, all taught in the context of practical communication. Sentence patterns and other fundamentals of speaking, reading, and writing will be taught, including both traditional characters (used everywhere before the 1950s and still used in Taiwan and Hong Kong) and simplified characters (used in China). Students should have achieved active command of more than 600 Chinese characters and more than 800 compounds by the end of the sequence CHNS 0101, CHNS 0102, and CHNS 0103. 5 hrs. lect., 1 hr. drill

Terms Taught

Fall 2021, Fall 2022, Fall 2023

Requirements

LNG

View in Course Catalog

Course Description

Beginning Chinese
An intensive continuation of CHNS 0101, this course is required of those wishing to take CHNS 0103 in the spring. Students may anticipate learning a significant amount of new vocabulary, sentence patterns and idiomatic expressions. Skits, oral presentations, writing assignments, and cultural activities are also part of this course. (CHNS 0101)

Terms Taught

Winter 2022, Winter 2024

Requirements

LNG, WTR

View in Course Catalog

Course Description

Beginning Chinese
This course is a continuation of the fall and winter terms with accelerated introduction of vocabulary, grammar, and sentence patterns designed to facilitate speaking and reading. Toward the end of this semester students will read Huarshang de meiren (Lady in the Painting), a short book written entirely in Chinese. (CHNS 0102 or equivalent) 5 hrs. lect., 1 hr. drill

Terms Taught

Spring 2020, Spring 2022, Spring 2023, Spring 2024

Requirements

LNG

View in Course Catalog

Course Description

Chinese Sociolinguistics (taught in English)
Sociolinguistics is mainly concerned with the interaction of language and society. The language situation in China is unique both in the modern world and in human history. We will gain a good understanding of sociolinguistics as a scientific field of inquiry through exploring the Chinese situation in this course. Some of the questions we will ask are: What is Mandarin (Modern Standard) Chinese? Who are "native speakers" of Mandarin? Are most Chinese people monolingual (speaking only one language) or bilingual (speaking two languages) or even multilingual? How many "dialects" are there in China? What is the difference between a "language" and a "dialect"? Are Chinese characters "ideographs", i.e., "pictures" that directly represent meaning and have nothing to do with sound? Why has the pinyin romanization system officially adopted in the 1950s never supplanted the Chinese characters? Why are there traditional and simplified characters? We will also explore topics such as power, register, verbal courtesy, gender and language use. Students are encouraged to compare the Chinese situation with societies that they are familiar with. 3 hrs. lect/disc (One semester of Chinese language study or by waiver)

Terms Taught

Spring 2020, Spring 2022, Spring 2023, Spring 2024

Requirements

NOA, SOC

View in Course Catalog

Course Description

Contemporary Social Issues in China: Advanced Readings (in Chinese)
A survey of materials written in modern expository Chinese (academic, journalistic and polemical) that focus on the cultural, political, economic, and social issues of contemporary China. This advanced readings course is designed primarily for seniors who have already spent a semester or more studying and living in China or Taiwan. Emphasis will be given to further developing students' ability to read, analyze, and discuss complex issues in Mandarin while also advancing proficiency in writing and in oral comprehension. Oral reports and written compositions will be integral to the course's requirements. (Approval Required) 3 hrs. lect.

Terms Taught

Fall 2021

Requirements

LNG, NOA

View in Course Catalog

Course Description

Senior Essay
(Approval Required)

Terms Taught

Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Winter 2021, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Winter 2022, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Winter 2023, Spring 2023, Fall 2023, Winter 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2024, Winter 2025, Spring 2025

View in Course Catalog

Course Description

Senior Thesis
(Approval required)

Terms Taught

Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Winter 2021, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Winter 2022, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Winter 2023, Spring 2023, Fall 2023, Winter 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2024, Winter 2025, Spring 2025

View in Course Catalog

Course Description

Senior Thesis Proposal
(Approval Required)

Terms Taught

Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Fall 2022, Fall 2023, Fall 2024

View in Course Catalog

Course Description

Senior Thesis
(Approval required).

Terms Taught

Winter 2021, Winter 2022, Spring 2022, Winter 2023, Spring 2023, Winter 2024, Spring 2024, Winter 2025, Spring 2025

Requirements

WTR

View in Course Catalog

Course Description

First Language Acquisition
All human children have the potential to acquire any human language in the right environment, yet it is much more difficult for adults to achieve native proficiency in a second language. Why? In this course we will explore questions such as: How does first language acquisition happen? Is it effortless? Are humans “hardwired” with language? Is it true that after the “Critical Period,” i.e., the onset of puberty, humans have lost this capacity? We will also explore social and cultural constraints on language acquisition, and learn basic techniques for collecting and analyzing data in language acquisition research. 3 hrs. sem.

Terms Taught

Fall 2022

Requirements

CW, SOC

View in Course Catalog

Course Description

Second Language Acquisition: Theories and Research
Why do most people have an accent when speaking a language they learned after a certain age? What are the processes and mechanisms behind the acquisition of an additional language? Why are there larger individual differences in the acquisition of a second language than in the first? These are some key questions addressed in second language acquisition (SLA) research. In this course we will study various SLA theories, research methodologies, and findings. We will also learn how to conduct basic SLA research, including collecting and analyzing data, and writing a report, following accepted conventions in the field. 3 hrs. lect.

Terms Taught

Fall 2023

Requirements

DED, SOC

View in Course Catalog