No abstract

Depictions of disability in Chinese-language films from China and Taiwan, once a rarity, have become mainstream since the 1980s and have shifted from critiquing national policies, historical accounts, and collective experiences to highlighting disabled people as complex characters and advocating for greater support for them. These films reveal how disability has become a positive source of identity in its own right. Films from the late 1980s and early 1990s such as Tian Zhuangzhuang’s The Blue Kite use disability to offer critiques of official policies or alternative accounts of historical events. Zhou Sun’s Breaking the Silence and Xue Xiaolu’s Ocean Heaven, which focus on caregiving parents and their disabled children, reveal the need for private, extragovernmental networks of support as well as greater government support for those with disabilities and their families. Finally, films such as Zhang Yimou’s Happy Times feature characters with impairments living rich and rewarding lives, countering stereotypes about disability.

No abstract

Should the writing construct be assessed through handwriting or keyboarding? As the only major language entirely without a syllabary or alphabet, the Chinese writing system is unique among modern languages, thus the question of writing proficiency is complicated by character recall. Most of the testing research comparing text entry methods has been conducted in English and has found that keyboarding and handwriting can be used interchangeably. This paper reports the outcome of a study comparing the results of handwritten and typed versions of the Chinese ACTFL Writing Proficiency Test (WPT). L2 Chinese students (n = 25) with Intermediate to Superior speaking skills were randomly divided into two groups and took both WPT versions in a counterbalanced design. Keyboarding resulted in significantly higher test scores [repeated measures ANOVA F(1, 23) = 62.7, p < .001, effect size partial eta squared = .73]. Keyboarding was on average 1.69 ACTFL sublevels higher than handwriting. Finally, this paper will discuss the writing construct in Chinese along with pedagogical implications around curricular decisions on teaching and assessing handwriting vs. keyboarding.

Depictions of disability in Chinese-language films from China and Taiwan, once a rarity, have become mainstream since the 1980s and have shifted from critiquing national policies, historical accounts, and collective experiences to highlighting disabled people as complex characters and advocating for greater support for them. These films reveal how disability has become a positive source of identity in its own right. Films from the late 1980s and early 1990s such as Tian Zhuangzhuang’s The Blue Kite use disability to offer critiques of official policies or alternative accounts of historical events. Zhou Sun’s Breaking the Silence and Xue Xiaolu’s Ocean Heaven, which focus on caregiving parents and their disabled children, reveal the need for private, extragovernmental networks of support as well as greater government support for those with disabilities and their families. Finally, films such as Zhang Yimou’s Happy Times feature characters with impairments living rich and rewarding lives, countering stereotypes about disability.