Dr. Dali Tan (PhD in comparative literature in 1997) is a Professor of Chinese at the Northern Virginia Community College and has been a Chinese teacher in the United States for over twenty-seven years. She has extensive experience teaching Chinese to students from 5th grade to college seniors as well as adult learners and heritage Chinese school students.
She is currently serving on the Editorial Board of STARTALK. She served as a board member of NECTFL (Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages) and President of CLASS (Chinese Language Association of Secondary-elementary Schools). She was the Director for NOVA STARTALK eTower Infrastructure Grant Project (etower.nvcc.edu), which has produced several Open Educational Resources modules based on a famous Chinese painting called “Along the River During the Qingming Festival.” She was the co-project director for a five-year research project entitled “Language Socialization in Chinese Study Abroad Homestay” which is a 2010-2014 research project of CALPER (Center for Advanced Language Proficiency Education and Research at Pennsylvania State University) funded by Title VI Grant from the Department of Education.
Dr. Tan also served on the College Board SAT II Chinese Committee for five years and the AP Chinese Development Committees for two years. She was the 2003 recipient of the Teacher Recognition Award issued by the U.S. Department of Education. Dr. Tan’s research and pedagogical articles have been published in China, Canada, Great Britain, and the United States. Her publication includes “Negotiating Cultural and Linguistic Differences in Translation through Transformation” and “A Few Words on Translating Emily Dickinson into Chinese” The Emily Dickinson Journal, 1997. “Study Abroad in China: Transformation of Students’ Perspectives on the World and Themselves,” Study Abroad in the Chinese Context, Peking University Press, 2008, “Criteria to Guide Textbook Decisions: Reflections from a Classroom Teacher and Teacher Trainer” in Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language, Nanjing University Press, 2011. “Pearls of Ancient Chinese Wisdom for Twenty-First-Century CFL Classrooms.” Explorations in Teaching Chinese as a Second Language.Cheng & Tsui, 2018.
She has co-authored many other texts, including “Exploring the potential of high school homestays as a context for local engagement and negotiation of difference– Americans in China” in Social and Cultural Aspects of Language Learning in Study Abroad, John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2013, “Contextualized Language Practices as Sites for Learning: Mealtime Talk in Short-Term Chinese Homestays.” Applied Linguistics. Oxford University Press 2014, “Discussing Emily Dickinson into Chinese: Lessons from the Cooperative Translation Project.” In Comparative Literature & World Literature, Peking University Press 2015, “The Power of Pattern Stories for Chinese Literacy.” in International Chinese Language Education, Foreign Languages Teaching and Research Press, 2016 and “Building Global Communities: Working Together toward Intercultural Competence” in NECTFL Review, 2017, “STARTALK eTower: Increasing Chinese Language and Cultural Proficiency Through Open Access Online Technology” in Teaching and Learning Chinese as a Second or Foreign Language: Emerging Trends, Lexington Books, 2019 as well as Step Up with Chinese (A Chinese textbook for middle school and high school students), Vol. 1, Vol. 2 and Vol. 3, Cengage Learning, 2011, 2013 and 2015 and Step Up to AP: Chinese Language, Culture, and Society, Cengage Learning, 2019.