China

Shaoyan Qi

Shaoyan Qi

Senior Lecturer in Chinese

Office: 510 Kent Hall
Office Hours: W 2:15-5:15
Phone: (212) 854-3604
Email: sq2106@columbia.edu

Educational Background

EdD: Applied Linguistics, Teachers College, Columbia University
MA: Education, Villanova University
MA: Linguistic and Socio-cultural Anthropology, State University of New York at Binghamton

Classes Taught

CHNS UN2201 Second Year Chinese N I
CHNS UN2202 Second Year Chinese N II
CHNS UN1010 Introductory Chinese
CHNS GU 4904 Acquisition of Chinese as a Second Language

Research Interests

Instructed Second Language Acquisition
Chinese Language Pedagogy
Task-Based Language Teaching

Shaoyan’s teaching career began at a weekend school for children adopted from China in a suburban area of Philadelphia. Before she joined Columbia at 2004, she taught Chinese language at Bryn Mawr, Haverford, Princeton, and Middlebury Summer School. Shaoyan has taught all levels of Chinese language classes and linguistic courses at both Columbia and Teachers College.  She is the main author of the award-winning textbook series Discover China (http://www.mydiscoverchina.com/components/ ). 

Publications

Implementing TBLT in an online Chinese class for beginners (2024), in Lambert C. (ed) Designing tasks for teaching foreign languages, Cambridge University Press.

Introduction: Why should second/foreign language teachers tune in to instructed SLA? (2015). Working Papers in TESOL and Applied Linguistics, 15 (2), pp. i-iv. Teacher’s College, Columbia University: New York

Discover China (2014). Macmillan: Hong Kong

Computer-assisted second language teaching, learning, and research (2011). Working Papers in TESOL and Applied Linguistics, 11 (2), pp. 27-28. Teacher’s College, Columbia University.

“The Selective Fossilization Hypothesis and its Putative Implications for Second Language Teaching” “Working Papers in TESOL and Applied Linguistics, 2009)

Book Contribution Chinese Grammar Made Easy—A practical and effective guide for teachers (Yale University Press, 2008)

“Questions for Pedagogy and Research” (Working Papers in TESOL and Applied Linguistics, 2007)

Ying Qian

ying_qianYing Qian

Associate Professor

Office: 930 IAB
Office Hours: F 4 PM-6 PM, Appointment required

Phone: (212)854-5027
Email: yq2189@columbia.edu

Educational Background

AB: Harvard University
MPhil: University of Cambridge, UK
PhD: Harvard University (’13)

Classes Taught

EAAS UN3322 East Asian Cinema
EAAS GU4572 Chinese Documentary Cinema
EAAS GR8998 Media Cultures in China

Research Interests

Chinese-language cinema and media; transnational media histories; media of activism, reform and critique; media ecology and knowledge formation

As a scholar of cinema and media, Ying Qian is interested in the role of media
and mediation in shaping politics, forming knowledge, and connecting realms
of experience. Her first book, Revolutionary Becomings: Documentary Media
in Twentieth-Century China (Columbia University Press, 2024) excavates
documentary’s multi-faceted productivities in China’s revolutionary
movements, from the toppling of the Qing Empire in 1911 to the political
campaigns and mass protests in the Mao and post-Mao eras. It approaches
documentary as an “eventful medium,” and as a prism to examine the mutual
constitution of media and revolution: how revolutionary movements gave
rise to specific media practices, and how these media practices in turn
contributed to the specific paths of revolution’s actualization. This book has
won the Lionel Trilling Book Award from Columbia College, and the Best
Book in Journalism History Award from the Association for Education in
Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC),and the Honorable Mention for Modern Language Association (MLA)’s Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for East Asian Studies. Ying Qian’s articles have
appeared in positions: asia critique, Critical Inquiry, New Left Review, China
Perspectives, New Literary History of Modern China, Oxford Handbook of
Chinese Cinemas, and other journals and websites. She is also the co-editor
(with Nicholas Bartlett) of a special issue, Neng 能and China’s Long 1980s
(positions: asia critique, 33.3 August 2025). At Columbia, she teaches classes
on East Asian cinema, Chinese media cultures, documentary media, media of
science and technology, and comparative media theory and history. Drawing
from her experiences in filmmaking, she has incorporated creative
assignments in her classes, guiding students to try their hands on media
productions.

Selected Publications

“The Rise of the Brain: Envisioning Human Potential in 1980s China” (single-authored), and
“Neng and China’s 1980s: a Reevaluation” (co-authored with Nicholas Bartlett), in Nicholas Bartlett and Ying Qian eds., Neng 能 and China’s Long 1980s (special issue), 
positions: asia critique v. 33, no. 3, August 2025.

Revolutionary Becomings: Documentary Media in Twentieth-Century China (Columbia
University Press, 2024)

“When Taylorism Met Revolutionary Romanticism: Documentary Cinema in China’s Great Leap
Forward”, Critical Inquiry (Spring 2020).

“The Spectre of Liu Shaoqi,” in A New Literary History of Modern China (Harvard, 2017)
“Working with Rubble: Montage, Tweets, and the Reconstruction of an Activist Cinema,”
in China’s iGeneration: Filmmakers, Films and Audiences in a New Media Age (Continuum,
2014)

“Power in the Frame: Independent Documentary in China,” The New Left Review (2012)

Yuan-Yuan Meng

Yuan-Yuan Meng

Senior Lecturer in Chinese

Office: 615 Kent Hall
Office Hours: R 3:00-5:00
Phone: (212)854-0660
Email: ym11@columbia.edu

Educational Background

EdM: Applied Linguistics, Teachers College, Columbia University
MA: TESOL, Teachers College, Columbia University
BA: Education, with a minor in English, National Taiwan Normal University

Classes Taught

UN1101-UN1102 First-year Chinese N I & II
UN1111-UN1112 First-year Chinese W I & II
UN2201-UN2202 Second-year Chinese N I & II
UN2221-UN2222 Second-year Chinese W I & II
CHNS GU4015-GU4016 Fourth Year Chinese I & II
CHNS GU4014-GU4015 Media Chinese I & II

Research Interests

Formulaic Language
Formative Assessment
Second Language Reading, Writing, and Vocabulary Acquisition
Stylistic Features of Chinese Journalistic Language

Yuan-Yuan Meng is Senior Lecturer in Chinese. She is also a certified tester for the Chinese Oral Proficiency Interview by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. Her research interests include formulaic language, formative assessment, second language reading, writing, and vocabulary acquisition, and stylistic features of Chinese journalistic language. Her most recent publications include “Written Corrective Feedback: A Review of Studies Since Truscott 1996,” “A curious Lexicographic Relic of the Cultural Revolution (co-authored with David Branner), and “A dynamic view on morphosyntactic accuracy and complexity in dyadic interaction.” She is currently completing a book manuscript, tentatively titled: A dictionary of Chinese idioms.

Publications

Meng, Y. (2019). A dynamic view on morphosyntactic accuracy and complexity in dyadic interaction. In Z.-H. Han (ed.), Profiling learner language as a dynamic system (pp. 17-47). Bristol: Multilingual Matters.          “Written Corrective Feedback: A Review of Studies Since Truscott 1996″ (Teachers College, Columbia University Working Papers in TESOL & Applied Linguistics, 2013)
“A Curious Lexicographic Relic of the Cultural Revolution” (The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 2013; co-author)
“Syntactic yoga in Chinese-English lexicography” (Zhōnghuá zìdiǎnyánjiū, 2010; co-author)
Book Chapter David and Helen in China: An intermediate course in modern Chinese (Yale University Press, 1999; co-author)