Danping Wang
@auckland.ac.nz
School of Cultures, Languages, and Linguistics
The University of Auckland
Dr Danping Wang is Senior Lecturer of Chinese in the School of Cultures, Languages, and Linguistics, the University of Auckland. She received the Teaching Excellence Award in Hong Kong and the Early Career Research Excellence Award in New Zealand. She is currently leading a Marsden Fund project supported by the Royal Society of New Zealand. Her research interests include multilingualism in language education, language ideology, and overseas Chinese language programme development and reform. Her research interests focus on language policies and curriculum inquiry.
EDUCATION
Doctor of Education, The Education University of Hong Kong
Master of Arts, Renmin University of China
Bachelor of Arts, Renmin University of China
Scopus Publications
Scholar Citations
Scholar h-index
Scholar i10-index
Scopus Publications
Danping Wang
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Abstract Multimodality and translanguaging are groundbreaking concepts that researchers and teachers in second language education have increasingly embraced over the past decade. Despite their potential to transform traditional monolingual and monomodal approaches to assessment design, these concepts remain largely unexplored in Chinese language teaching, particularly as legitimate assessment strategies. This study was conducted with a large group of ab initio beginners of Chinese at a Western university. It first analyses students’ digital multimodal composing (DMC) projects, a video assessment designed to enable students to showcase their learning achievements multimodally and multilingually. It then discusses the challenges students encountered when engaging with this novel assessment approach for the first time. Findings demonstrate that in this DMC project students created a translanguaging space with rich trans-semiotic resources, actively engaging in communication through their newly acquired language despite being absolute beginners in their first few weeks of learning. Furthermore, due to the novelty of the assessment design, the study also found that some students encountered challenges such as uneven technical skills and the complexity of the assessment design. The study suggests that teachers should reconceptualise their approach to teaching Chinese in the digital age, focusing on empowering learners to apply their language skills in real-life communication contexts. Building ownership of their L2 learning can strengthen their motivation to learn Chinese more effectively and creatively.
Danping Wang and Martin East
Walter de Gruyter GmbH
Abstract This paper explores how beginners in a second language (L2) perform on and perceive an online writing test that is designed based on the notion of translanguaging. The test was administered during emergency remote teaching when many L2 courses navigated creative solutions to online testing. Situated in an ab initio Mandarin Chinese course in New Zealand, 163 students’ first-time digital compositions in Chinese and responses to an immediate follow-up survey on their translanguaging practices were analysed as part of evaluating a new assessment design. Students’ digital compositions demonstrated purposeful translanguaging in assessment conditions, judiciously negotiating their existing linguistic knowledge when completing the task. The writing assessment showed augmented task completion when learners’ trans-semiotic repertoires were recognised as a legitimate resource for identity expression. The survey found that most students supported the creative design that integrated digital multimodal composition and translanguaging, replacing the monolingually-focused handwriting-based test tasks. Some students were sceptical of the translanguaging approach and found it unexpected, unnecessary, and inauthentic. The study suggests that L2 writing test design might incorporate translanguaging as a creative and transformative assessment facet to genuinely engage beginning learners in meaningful writing tasks when their proficiency level is limited.
Xian Zhao and Danping Wang
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
AbstractThe shift to emergency remote teaching due to COVID-19 brought diverse psychological, emotional, and academic challenges for second language (L2) learners. Overcoming these challenges necessitated the utilization of grit, a personality trait signifying perseverance and passion to sustain academic progress. While grit and emotions have been explored in English language learning, their interaction remains underexplored in other languages. Despite Mandarin Chinese being widely learned globally, little previous work has been done to investigate learners’ psychological experiences, the function of L2 grit, and the relationship between them in online learning from the perspective of positive psychology. This might lead to an incomplete understanding of this pattern across domains and contexts, thus impeding the development of this discipline. This study uses a structural equation model to analyze the relationship between L2 grit, anxiety, boredom, and enjoyment based on 204 valid responses from Chinese as a Second Language learners in mainland China. Results underscore the importance of one facet of L2 grit, perseverance of effort in online Chinese language learning, and highlight the domain-specific nature of emotions. It also suggests that educators need not be overly concerned about negative emotions in online education, as they can be overridden by positive emotions.
Danping Wang
Walter de Gruyter GmbH
Danping Wang
Walter de Gruyter GmbH
Abstract This study explores how translanguaging has been enacted in a university-wide curriculum transformation project in an additional language programme in Aotearoa New Zealand. Its aim is to reveal students’ perspectives on integrating Indigenous epistemology into the curriculum of a beginner-level Chinese course. The survey data, collected from 155 students, show that most students react positively to the idea of embedding Indigenous epistemology into language teaching through a translanguaging assessment design. Moreover, students’ translingual practices in their digital multimodal compositions demonstrate that they can enact translanguaging to enable the coexistence of different bodies of knowledge while learning an additional language. Based on these findings, I suggest that language teaching should integrate place-based worldviews that are meaningful to all local students. It is also important to adopt translanguaging as a decolonising approach to facilitate a pluriversal epistemological stance that promotes plurilingualism in language education. The nexus between translanguaging and decoloniality needs to be explored further, as does the possibility for cross-civilisational learning through translanguaging.
Xian Zhao and Danping Wang
Wiley
ABSTRACTAlthough psychological factors such as emotion and engagement have gained increasing attention for their role in language learning success, a substantial gap remains in understanding the sources of boredom and its impact on learners’ engagement, whether behavioural, affective or cognitive, in languages other than English (LOTE). This study employs questionnaires and semi‐structured interviews to examine the cause‐and‐effect relationships between antecedents, boredom and engagement in a distance online learning context among university Chinese as a second language (CSL) teachers and learners (N = 17) from China. The findings suggest that (1) boredom is primarily a student‐oriented construct influenced by physical fatigue and academic regression. Teacher‐related factors, such as a slow and predictable teaching pace, dull classroom design, lack of questioning, explanations and untimely feedback, also contribute to boredom, along with learning tasks (e.g., repetitive, mechanical and over‐challenging tasks), and internet‐related issues. Boredom is notably more present in listening courses rather than in integrated Chinese courses. (2) Boredom primarily affected learners’ behavioural engagement (e.g., distraction, sleepiness, mind‐wandering, and task abandonment) and subsequently impaired their cognitive (e.g., concentration, comprehension) and emotional (e.g., anxiety, anger) layers. This study elucidated the intricate interconnections between layers within engagement and beyond, and the interrelationships among a list of factors across conative (engagement, effort and motivation), affective (boredom, anxiety and anger) and cognitive (concentration, comprehension and reasoning) dimensions in a domain‐specific and skill‐specific manner. In closing, pedagogical implications for both educators and learners are discussed to reduce boredom and enhance learners’ classroom engagement, ultimately improving learning outcomes and the overall language learning experience.
Martin East and Danping Wang
Informa UK Limited
Danping Wang and Xiaoyan Qiu
Routledge
Lin Chen and Danping Wang
Informa UK Limited
Danping Wang and Alice Chik
Springer Nature Singapore
Danping Wang
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Abstract This study explores teacher perspectives on a government policy that seeks to integrate Indigenous knowledge into mainstream foreign language education in New Zealand schools. Based on in-depth interviews, the study found that language teachers generally support this educational change because trans/languaging involving English and te reo Māori (the Māori language) has become an ordinary practice in their teaching and school lives. However, foreign language teachers expressed a need for discipline-specific materials and professional development to help them integrate mātauranga Māori (Indigenous knowledge of Māori) into their teaching. Their concerns can be understood as a lack of support in interpreting “what,” “how,” and “to what extent” the policy will be implemented. The study suggests using a decolonising approach to help teachers affirm the relevance of Indigenous knowledge in their discipline. It recommends that policymakers adopt a pluriversal stance to ensure that diverse knowledge systems can coexist and interact harmoniously rather than compete with one another in the new National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) curriculum.
Danping Wang
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
AbstractFor the past two decades, a significant number of ethnic minority students from diverse racial, cultural, linguistic, and religious backgrounds have entered Chinese language classrooms in Hong Kong for the first time. Simultaneously, Chinese language teachers have come under criticism for their lack of understanding of diversity and their failure to integrate ethnic minority students academically and socially. However, there is little research on how these teachers can transform their educational beliefs, teaching techniques, and attitudes toward diversity and inclusion to respond effectively to the drastic changes taking place in their professional work. This study examines how a group of Chinese language teachers employed translanguaging as a social justice strategy to address the challenges of teaching minority students in a monolingual and assimilative educational setting in Hong Kong. Classroom observations show that teachers enacted a translanguaging stance, using students’ familiar semiotic resources to make their teaching more inclusive and equitable for ethnic minority students from low socioeconomic and religious backgrounds. Teachers reported becoming more aware of diversity in the classroom as well as of the social inequalities and racial discrimination outside of school. The study shows that criticism has been unfairly levied on Chinese language teachers in Hong Kong, who should not be held responsible for the social problems hindering ethnic minorities’ social mobility. Research should include a decolonial perspective to legitimize translanguaging as a social justice strategy for more transformative praxis in the education sector in postcolonial Hong Kong.
Danping Wang and Claudia Mason
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
AbstractThis study utilises the Identity Triangle Model (Dugas in Teach Dev 25(3):243–262, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1080/13664530.2021.1874500) to examine the experiences of one particular novice non-native Mandarin Chinese teacher at a university in New Zealand. A case study design was employed to track the identity negotiations of this European non-native Chinese speaker during 12 weeks of her first semester of teaching. Analysis of the data revealed nine subcategories within the psychological, behavioural, and relational domains according to the Identity Triangle Model. The findings suggest that this new non-native speaker teacher viewed her as an accidental teacher, exploring a teaching career without a strong instrumentalist aspiration or a clear career path in language teaching. Instead, she were more motivated by a desire for personal growth and the opportunity to reinvent themselves in a new cultural context. The results of this study offer theoretical implications for the adoption of a unified framework in future research on the identity of first-time language teachers, and practical implications for developing sustainable strategies aimed at recruiting and retaining non-native speaker teachers in foreign language education.
Xian Zhao and Danping Wang
Elsevier BV
Danping Wang and Danni Li
Springer Nature Singapore
Xian Zhao and Danping Wang
Frontiers Media SA
Recent years have witnessed increasing attention to personality strength (grit) due to its merit in goal-seeking language learning processes. Two facets of grit, namely perseverance of effort (PE) and consistency of interest (CI), play a critical role in overcoming learning difficulties and strengthening willpower to pursue learning goals. The current review seeks to explore various issues related to grit, including its factor structure, the relationship between grit and frequently associated factors, as well as the utility of PE and CI in facilitating language learning. This exploration is based on the findings of 32 empirical articles published between 2017 and 2022 from three databases. The results indicate that although research which examines the role of grit has entered a fast growth phase since 2020, there is still a need for expansion and diversification in scopes, participants, research methods, and language contexts. Moreover, previous studies have not adequately addressed the critical issue of grit’s conceptualization and factor structure. Finally, this study suggests that future researchers should impartially assess the factor structure and nature of PE and CI, to provide more robust evidence to clarify the relationship between grit and diverse emotions and positive institutions, in order to advance understanding of grit in second language learning.
Danping Wang and Martin East
Springer International Publishing
Linda Lei and Danping Wang
Springer International Publishing
Lin Chen and Danping Wang
Springer International Publishing
Danping Wang
Springer International Publishing
Xian Zhao and Danping Wang
Informa UK Limited
Danping Wang and Linda Tsung
Walter de Gruyter GmbH
Abstract This paper presents a systematic review of research on Chinese as a Second Language (CSL) education for ethnic minority students in Hong Kong SAR. Using three databases and screening with specific inclusion and exclusion criteria, the study selected 38 empirical studies published in English-language peer-reviewed journals. We find that there has been a surge of publications in Hong Kong in the past decade (2010–2020), and they are mostly authored by scholars from three universities in Hong Kong. Most of the research took a phenomenological approach, using interviews as the main data collection method and focusing on underprivileged South Asian students in secondary schools. The thematic analysis showed that Hong Kong’s CSL adopted a poststructuralist paradigm for understanding and revealing social inequalities surrounding Chinese language education for ethnic minority students. The study concludes that Hong Kong must decolonise its education system to genuinely support ethnic minority students to achieve educational equality and social justice.
Danping Wang
Routledge
Danping Wang
Elsevier BV
Abstract This paper explores learners’ perspectives regarding first and second language use in foreign language classrooms at a higher education setting. Against the backdrop of the decline of language learning, as well as through a sociocultural lens, this study aims to gain new insights from students about what kind of medium of instruction (MoI) models they demand for better engagement and interaction. The mixed-method research was conducted in Mandarin Chinese programmes at three New Zealand universities. It surveyed 237 students through questionnaires, followed by 16 individual interviews. The findings of this study revealed a discrepancy between the prescribed monolingual principle and a perceived translanguaging reality. University students demanded a flexible and realistic MoI model. They viewed classroom L2 use as a dynamic progress that are influenced by many levels of factors. Furthermore, students desired to maintain a translanguaging space as a scaffolding and stress-relieving strategy during fast-paced learning. They felt the translanguaging approach had enabled two-way communication in higher education where an intellectual dialogic pedagogy is highly valued. This study suggests foreign language programmes in higher education re-examining its monolingual ideology and considering employing the translanguaging approach to better engage and retain students in their programmes.