Sheni Chen received her Ph.D. from National Taiwan Normal University, majoring in Teaching Chinese as a Second Language. Her thesis topic was “A study on the Training of Volunteer Chinese Teachers for Overseas Chinese School.” This study of teacher training used overseas Chinese schools as the teaching field of Chinese language volunteer assignments and conducted research and analysis on the planning and strategy principle and exercises for pre-expatriate training courses.

Sheni Chen’s academic research interests include textbook design, teacher training, and pedagogy strategies. During 2015-2016, she had written textbook materials for the Overseas Community Affairs Council (OCAC) of the Republic of China, as an Executive Editor, overseeing the development of new overseas Chinese language Textbooks: Let’s Learn Chinese 《學華語向前走》

It is the latest national overseas Chinese textbook. It is aimed at the current overseas Chinese schools and is oriented towards learners of Chinese as a second language. The series of books has been written and compiled in a total of 12 volumes covering K1-12 Chinese learner level. Since then, she has not only taught online teacher’s training courses in Global HuayuWorld: http://www.huayuworld.org/  but has also travelled to overseas Chinese schools for teacher training lectures in Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina. Additionally, she has served as (Honorary) Team Leader and Consultant for many years in the Overseas Chinese Culture and Education Foundation (OCCEF). Since 2014, she has been responsible for the volunteer teacher training and the selection of qualified teachers for Overseas Chinese schools.

Sheni Chen holds the National Certificate of Qualification to Teach Mandarin Chinese as a Second/Foreign Language. She was selected by Taiwan’s Ministry of Education from 2010 to 2012 to teach in the UBC Asian Studies Department as a visiting lecturer, teaching heritage and non-heritage student’s basic and intermediate Chinese courses.

In the past 20 years, she had served as an assistant professor and lecturer at National Quemoy University, National Taiwan Normal University, and Nanya Institute of Technology. She was also a teacher at the Junior and Senior High School levels in Taiwan. Since 2014, she has also served as a Chinese lecturer in distance learning at Waseda University, Japan, teaching intermediate and advanced level Chinese courses.

• Let’s Learn Chinese 《學華語向前走》 (A complete set of twelve books, free download: https://www.huayuworld.org/material-download.php)