Rassias takes teaching method to China

Professor of French and Italian John Rassias is spending six weeks in the People's Republic of China teaching the Rassias Method to instructors and making a documentary film to be shown in China and the United States.

Administrators at Beijing University invited Rassias to conduct workshops for instructors from all areas to improve their teaching of English, Japanese, French, and Chinese. Rassias plans to select several participants from the workshops for additional training so that they will be able to train others after he returns to Dartmouth.

According to Rassias, language instruction in China is particularly important since it suffered greatly during China's Cultural Revolution of the 19605. A report issued last year by the Council for Liberal Learning of the Association of American Colleges in Washington, D.C., said: "The current leadership of Chinese education was trained in the 19405, many in the United States. But there is no successor generation. . . . We must now invest in the 21st century."

The visit and the documentary film are being funded by The Rockefeller Foundation and IBM Corporation's East Asia/Pacific Group. Assistant professor of drama David Parry accompanied Rassias to China to film the experience. According to Parry, Rassias is using unusual and innovative techniques to bridge the cultural gap between Chinese and Americans, so making the film will also involve using creative approaches.