WANG Haixiao
WANG Haixiao is a Professor of English and Applied Linguistics with the Department of Applied Foreign Language Studies, Nanjing University. He obtained his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees from Nanjing University, Lancaster University and Teachers College, Columbia University, respectively. He is the winner of a number of national and provincial awards for teaching excellence and the author of dozens of popularly acclaimed textbooks. His research interests include second language acquisition, computer-assisted language teaching, language assessment, and teaching materials development. Currently, he serves as member of the College Foreign Language Teaching Advisory Committee of the MOE, member of the National College English Test Committee, and Vice President of ChinaCALL. He plays active roles in a number of national projects for the development and reform of College English teaching and assessment in China.
Information and communications technology (ICT) has brought about tremendous changes to almost every aspect of people’s lives. It has also transformed the way people use language and do things with language, thus making it necessary for educators, especially language teachers to rethink the key competencies students of the 21st century have to be equipped with because traditional literacies are no longer adequate for today’s younger generation to survive and thrive in an increasingly digitized world. To accommodate all these changes brought about by the new technological innovations and applications, in some places, national curricula have been revised to incorporate varieties of digital literacies, while in others teacher development programs have been implemented so as to enhance teachers’ technological competences. For College English teaching in China, efforts have also been made to adapt the program to the changing needs of the social and educational environment, starting from the formation of new objectives of teaching, to the reform in the approaches to learning and teaching, as well as assessment and evaluation, as is prescribed in the national Guidelines on College English Teaching (GCET), but fundamental to the success of these efforts is the development of digital literacies of College English teachers. This paper attempts to explore the core components of digital literacies for College English teachers along the three dimensions of key understanding, knowledge and skills based on the requirements of the GCET as well as research findings in the related fields.