Mr. Garry Hodgins
Chairperson
Garry first developed his interest in Chinese language and culture when he began practicing 太极拳 in 1993 as an undergraduate student in UCD. The UCD club was very active at this time and Garry successfully competed in international Chinese martial arts competitions, winning the British 摔跤Championship in 2002 and winning three silver medals in 推手 at the second European Tai Chi and Internal Martial Arts Competition in the same year. Garry also competed in 散手 competitions during this time. His interest in Chinese culture, particularly Chinese philosophy and literature, stemmed from the allusions made in the names of postures in the hand forms, weapons forms, and internal strength exercises which he practiced.
Garry is an English and History teacher with over 24 years of experience, teaching in Irish secondary schools. In 2016, he became a student in the PD (Professional Diploma) course and later graduated with First Class Honours from the MA in Teaching Chinese Language and Culture from UCD at the Irish Institute for Chinese Studies in 2019. He is presently continuing his studies in Chinese and hopes to sit HSK 5 in the future.
In 2019, Garry began to teach the Junior Cycle short course in Chinese language and Culture at Stepaside ETSS (Educate Together Secondary School). He has attended in-service training for teachers of the Leaving Certificate Mandarin Chinese. He is a co-author of a research paper, “Students’ intercultural sensitivity development through telecollaborative Chinese language learning on Zoom: A case study of Irish students at the beginning-level of Chinese language” which he presented at the Technology and Chinese Language Teaching Conference at Yale University and at Eurocall (the European Conference on Computer Assisted Language Learning) at Sorbonne University, in 2021.
As the President of the IACT he sees the immediate benefits of this membership in creating a community of practice for Chinese language teachers which will help to support them in applying the best methodologies to teach Chinese. As a committee member of the EACT, Garry is involved in the conversation of Chinese language teaching internationally. Membership of the IACT also provides practitioners with access to a wealth of experience and research internationally which can benefit the teaching and learning of Chinese.