Helena Löthman

• Medarbetarportalen (log in)

Teaching

I have been teaching Chinese at undergraduate level since 1992, first at Stockholm University, since 2010 here at Uppsala University. Since 2014 I also teach courses at advanced level (see CV).

Pedagogical view

To learn something really well you need joy, practise, enthusiasm, practise, even more joy and then a bit more practice. After 10,000 hours you master it!

I see my role as a teacher to guide my students to knowledge. The individual student does the work of learning by spending time and effort on the subject, while I introduce concepts and grammar, explain structures and help out when difficulties arise. I offer my students a "smorgasbord" of learning strategies and study techniques. I give them exercises and tasks to solve, sometimes in groups, sometimes individually. With the different versions I hope to cover all individual students' needs of ways to learn.

Research

I am working on my PhD thesis "No Job - No Independence? Women On and Off the Labour Market in Beijing and Tianjin" (working title). Based on interviews with unemployed and laid off as well as re-employed women workers conducted during field work in Beijing and Tianjin, I try to find out how the fare in a socio-economic perspective when they are off the labour market.

Mentor

I am a member of the mentor network and take mentoring assignments in Swedish and English.

I am a mentor for two reasons. One is that I want to share my experience with you and be a support, a support that wasn't available when I was a new teacher at the university. The second reason is that I'm curious about teaching methods in other disciplines and how you plan your teaching - I simply want to learn more.