Teachers as Curators: Curating Authentic Online Content for Beginning and Intermediate CFL Learners

Abstract

<p>An abundance of authentic materials is available online for language learning. To locate appropriate materials is nearly impossible for even the most motivated learners. This requires teachers to curate authentic online content to enhance and supplement learners’ learning. Content curation is the process of collecting, organizing and displaying information. This article describes the procedure and strategies one may use in curating authentic content materials for Chinese language learning online. Teachers as curators need to collect the content with the consideration of difficulty level for different learners. In addition, they should put a lot of thoughts into content categorization based on the learners’ language levels, interests, and their language skills they would like to practice so as to make it conveniently accessible to learners. Necessary pedagogical supports should be provided with the collection.</p>