Acknowledgements

We have been teaching both Chinese linguistics classes and Chinese language classes at US universities since the early 2000s. Just as we were thinking of writing a textbook that bridges Chinese linguistics and L2 Chinese pedagogy/learning, a series of talks at the 27th North American Conference on Chinese Linguistics (NACCL-27) in 2015 on teaching Chinese linguistics to undergraduates truly inspired us. We greatly appreciate the ideas and teaching experiences that were shared by a group of well-established Chinese linguists during the Special Panel on the Art of Teaching Chinese Linguistics to Undergrads at NACCL-27, organized by Prof. Hongyin Tao and his team from the UCLA Asian Languages and Cultures Department. The two sessions of the special panel planted the seed for the book in our minds.

A special debt of gratitude is owed to Professor Hongyin Tao. He not only inspired us at the NACCL-27, but also provided timely and insightful advice to us from the planning stage, to the writing and revising of several drafts over the years. We are truly grateful for his patience and professional guidance. We would also like to thank the manuscript reviewers. Their comments have led to a number of substantial improvements in our writing.

Our sincere thanks are also due to all who have contributed to this book whether directly or indirectly: to Gerald Chaudron of the University of Memphis and Kayla Garrett of Georgetown University for proofreading the manuscript. We are very grateful to Jennifer Smith (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), Zhongwei Shen (University of Massachusetts Amherst) and Jie Cai (American University) for the initial discussions about the Chinese linguistics class and sharing teaching materials. We would like to thank Hongyuan Dong (George Washington University), Chunsheng Yang (University of Connecticut), Yunjuan He (University of North Georgia), and the late professor Tianwei Xie (California State University at Long Beach) for sharing their sample syllabi and teaching ideas with us, and Hongyong Wang (Central China Normal University) for helping us find references. The materials in this book formed the core of our Chinese linguistics classes to both undergraduate and graduate students for several years and we are deeply grateful to the contribution of our former and current students at the George Washington University and the University of Memphis: their stimulating discussions and feedback to the teaching materials and exercises are invaluable to us. This book project is supported by the Humanities Facilitating Fund – FY22 of George Washington University.

The two authors are responsible for all the errors, misrepresentations, and inconsistencies in this book. The Preface and Chapters 1–4 were written by Hang Zhang, and Chapters 5–8 were written by Lan Zhang.