STARTALK

The Penn-STARTALK Chinese Program is a testament to the quality of language instruction at Penn, highlighting the extraordinary role that Penn’s Chinese language faculty play in education beyond the university. In collaboration with Penn’s Center for East Asian Studies (CEAS), the Chinese Language Program (CLP) has been awarded over 13 STARTALK grants, totaling over $1.15 million, from the Department of Defense. These grants aim to increase the number of Americans learning, speaking, and teaching critical foreign languages. Between 2007 and 2014, Penn-STARTALK provided Chinese language instruction and generous scholarships to nearly 200 high school students and fourteen K-12 teachers to learn and teach Chinese at Penn. From 2017 to 2019, utilizing the theme “One Belt, One Road” and the Silk Road, the Penn-STARTALK teacher program offered much-needed professional development opportunities to sixty K-12 teachers, integrating cutting-edge pedagogy, artifacts from the Penn Anthropology Museum, and world history and geography courses into the training.