Fengtao Wu, a senior lecturer in Chinese in Arts & Sciences, offers one of the nation’s “very best” university courses in Chinese, according to a recent College Board Advanced Placement World Languages Best Practices Course Study.
Conducted by the Eugene, Ore.-based Educational Policy Improvement Center (EPIC), the College Board study identified Wu’s third-level “Modern Chinese II” course as one of the nation’s top 10 “best practice” courses in Chinese.
Wu’s course and others selected on the basis of exemplary teaching practices will be used as models for the redesign of the College Board’s equivalent college-level Advanced Placement course in Chinese.
Wu earned a master’s degree from Indiana University Bloomington in 1987 and taught there before joining the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages and Literatures in Arts & Sciences.
He has been teaching Chinese, including elementary, intermediate and advanced levels as well as calligraphy, for about 25 years.
Wu has taught advanced courses in the summer immersion program of Indiana University and has been lead teacher for the past nine years for Level IV language instruction at the Chinese Summer Intensive Program at Middlebury College.
Wu also served several times as language director for a joint Washington University-Duke University study program in China.
He has published a set of textbooks for beginners and intermediate students and is working on a book about Chinese grammar.