The Department of Applied Chinese Language and Literature at Chung Yuan Christian University (CYCU) held its annual Graduation Project Competition on January 8, attracting 10 teams and over 40 senior students. Based on four years of study, students demonstrated professional knowledge and practical skills in Mandarin teaching, cultural adaptation/translation, and digital applications through project planning, teaching material design, and final presentations. The event featured lively exchanges, reflecting CYCU’s strong commitment to integrating theory with practice and whole-person education.
Centered on General Mandarin Teaching, the projects combined linguistics and Chinese language teaching theories with traditional literature, cultural studies, intercultural communication, and emerging digital technologies. Topics extended beyond general teaching content to include historical and local Taiwanese culture, temple culture, and cross-cultural comparisons involving countries such as Japan and Vietnam, showcasing students’ ability to integrate theory and teaching practice to meet diverse needs in real-world Mandarin education settings.
Department Chair Professor Yu-Fen Liu noted that the competition is a key milestone for students to review their learning outcomes and validate their professional competence and teaching approaches. She praised students’ dedication and emphasized that Mandarin teaching is highly interdisciplinary, requiring the integration of language knowledge, cultural understanding, instructional design, and technology—making the graduation project an important platform for bridging academic training with future teaching practice.
The competition invited experts from the education, academic, and publishing sectors as judges, including Professor Ming-Yi Li (Chinese Language Program, Language Center, National Central University), Professor Chin-Lan Chang (Chair, Department of Language and Creative Writing, National Taipei University of Education), and Ms. Hui-Juan Huang (Deputy Editor-in-Chief, Wunan Publishing). The judges unanimously commended the projects for their quality and innovation, noting that many demonstrated strong classroom applicability, with several showing commercial and market potential.
The first prize project, “Walking Taiwan with ‘Taiwan Steps’”, presented in a booklet series, integrates Taiwanese daily-life skills and cultural content into Mandarin teaching materials. Covering topics such as everyday knowledge, transportation, food culture, classroom and social etiquette, situational communication, and traditional culture, the materials feature a well-structured design and include QR codes linking to instructional videos, combining text, visuals, and multimedia resources to help learners apply Mandarin in real-life situations—highly practical for international students studying Mandarin in Taiwan.
The second prize project, “Mythical Chinese: Illustrated Idioms”, is themed around characters from Chinese mythology. The team designed texts tailored to learners at different proficiency levels, skillfully integrating idiom learning into an illustrated storybook format. The materials also include QR-code audio narration to support listening and reading development. Completed as a three-volume set, the project combines instructional value with engaging reading content, demonstrating students’ ability to transform literary themes into practical teaching resources.
The third prize project, “Taoyuan Tales: A Mandarin Learning Journey”, focuses on Taoyuan’s local culture and offers customized teaching materials designed specifically for Japanese Mandarin learners. It integrates general Mandarin content with local cultural elements, using a storyline centered on interactions between Japanese and Taiwanese students to explore cultural similarities and differences between Taiwan and Japan. The project also features QR-code online learning games and a podcast series to further extend cultural themes, showcasing an innovative multimedia approach to Mandarin education.
In addition to the top three award-winning projects, another student team developed “Huayu Tong”, a Mandarin learning app that transforms Chinese language teaching concepts into a mobile learning tool. Designed for flexible and real-time learning via smart devices, the app demonstrates students’ interdisciplinary integration and technological application skills, while also reflecting the growing trend of digital and mobile learning in Mandarin education.
This Graduation Project Competition showcased the achievements students have accumulated over four years of coursework, teaching practice, and project-based research, reflecting the department’s long-term commitment to integrating theory with practice. Through the project process, students not only deepened their understanding of Mandarin teaching as a profession, but also built a solid foundation for future careers in language instruction, teaching material development, and related fields, fully demonstrating CYCU’s educational philosophy of learning-by-doing and whole-person education.
