Miao-Fen Tseng

Miao-Fen Tseng is Professor of Chinese in the Department of East Asian Languages, Literatures and Cultures at the University of Virginia, where she also directs the Institute of World Languages and leads the UVA STARTALK Teacher & Student Academy. She has held numerous national leadership roles, including founder and president of the Chinese Language Teachers Association of Virginia and senior advisor to the College Board AP Chinese program.

Education

• Ph.D. in Second Language Acquisition & Teacher Education, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1999)
• M.A. in Teaching English as an International Language, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1995)

Research & Scholarly Focus

Professor Tseng’s research centers on second language acquisition, task-based language teaching, technology-enhanced and online Chinese instruction, and teacher professional development. She has pioneered the integration of virtual exchange, virtual reality, and GenAI tools into Chinese curricula, and currently guides an 18-faculty cohort across 10 languages in developing AI-empowered classrooms.

Recent Publications Trajectory

Across the past decade, her publications reveal a clear evolution from classroom-centered task design to immersive technology integration. Recent works emphasize online synchronous immersive communication, virtual reality-enhanced tasks, and teacher preparation for digital pedagogy. Collectively, these studies provide scalable models for technology-mediated Chinese language education.

Honors & Awards

• Albert Nelson Marquis Who’s Who Lifetime Achievement Award (2019)
• STARTALK Award – continuous federal funding (2008–2024)
• Distinguished Alumni Award, University of Taipei (2018, 2023)
• Jefferson Trust Award (2018)
• Helen Warriner-Burke FLAVA Distinguished Service Award (2016)
• Jiede Empirical Research Grant & Ron Walton Presentation Award, CLTA (2015, 1998)

Grants, Programs & Mentorship

She has secured more than $1.5 million in STARTALK grants and directs large-scale teacher-training academies that have supported hundreds of K-16 educators and graduate students. Through the UVA STARTALK Academy and other consortium initiatives (e.g., Duke-UVA-Vanderbilt partnership), she mentors new generations of Chinese language leaders and facilitates global online collaborations.

Laboratories, Teams & Future Projects

Professor Tseng convenes the GenAI-Empowered Classroom Cohort—a cross-linguistic team of 18 faculty—and continues to expand open-access resources, including two 2023-2024 NEH-supported OER Pressbooks that embed virtual exchange and interactive H5P tasks for advanced Chinese learners.