There is a general thrust that I look for in my own teaching of language (mostly Chinese Mandarin, though I also do demos in Vietnamese for language teachers who already speak Chinese). Proficiency is a fancy word that takes too much time to define in each conversation about it, so I prefer the word "use". Can learners use the language? Use where? Use with whom? And use when?
Taking functional "usage" as my guide post, I've taken A LOT from other teachers, and we all have taken, in turn, from each other. Of the thousands of teachers I plug in with on social media (mainly Facebook groups), I have seen over and over how any one teacher will borrow a teaching idea from the group (for example, creating a lending library for the class), try it with their own group/s of students, discover new needs that are special to that group (including the teacher's unique needs), and then share their modified version back with the larger group of thousands of teachers (e.g. adding sticky notes that students can leave in their book with comments and star-ratings for the next reader, adding intrinsic motivation for the next borrower). What I have been very slow to take from other Chinese teachers is "culture". I put this in quotations here because I do not believe that most of the cultural lessons that I've seen many Chinese classrooms is knowledge or skill that can be used after the lesson. And I mean anywhere, ever. Not in the classroom again, not outside the classroom, and not with communities of people who speak the language (native, non-native, or even classmates). I'll start here with an example of "culture" that I think was appropriate for the class I used it in. Teaching a small group of 2nd and 3rd graders, we discussed a cartoons made small children in China about moon cakes, during the Mid-Autumn Festival. The kids enjoyed it. And then it never came up again. It's possible that they kids will grow up, and say to someone then, "Oh yeah, Mid-Autumn Festival. I saw a cartoon once about that when I was really little." But for me as a teacher, that's not enough. Let's look at a stronger example. At a STARTALK program I lead, where the theme was "A Musical Journey Through China", we showed Wang Lihong's Twelve Zodiacs music video. This, I believe, was age appropriate for our high schoolers. They requested to see it again on the following days, and I caught some of them watching it with headphones on their phones during breaks, of their own free will. I was happy to see that they had learned about someone relevant that they could talk about with Chinese speakers (native, non-native, and classmates). And this is what I really want: something learners can use in talk with people, be they native, non-native, or even classmates, and not just because the teacher told them to talk about it, but because they find it meaningful to bring up on their own out of their own personal interest. That means I have to get to know my students and their age group, and frequently check with them about what they're into. (note: if learners show they find a fictional story entertaining, then I think it's perfectly appropriate for that group, as they may choose to read more about it, discuss it with classmates and the teacher, write about it, etc. This differs from the Chinese cultural presentations and activities I see where students, for example, tie a Chinese knot, and then never talk about it again unless the teacher pushes them to). Too often I see Chinese teachers think like the adults I grew up with in Los Angeles (general white Americans), trying to introduce things to kids and teenagers while always betraying that they really had no idea what we liked. If language is going to be useful for communication, then teachers need to know what learners want to communicate about, and, in addition, learners need to see the language as relevant for their own communication. Things I don't want to do in a classroom include: showing Chinese cartoons to learners over age 10, unless they show it is nostalgic to them (but how could they if they didn't grow up with it?), singing songs intended for small children, showing calendars and pictures that teach holidays without reference to what people do then (including examples from real people's lives). I also can't imagine a speaker of the language (native, non-native, or fellow classmate) having any interest in talking about these things ("Do you know Mid-Autumn Festival?" "Yes, I do." "Oh, so you know Mid-Autumn Festival" is the best I can think of). My perception is that most of what shows up in textbooks and teacher materials (found or created) is boring to learners and to anyone they might find themselves conversing with (or reading about, or presenting on). So what do I like? I like these links for talking about current trends and news in China:
In sum, and most importantly, I want to keep asking "Is this useful for my particular group of learners, given their age and learning goals" (again coming back to use as my guiding post). I hope more Chinese teachers might share what they are doing with up-to-date resources like these in their classrooms, so that I, in-turn, might further adapt tasks and activities into something new again, and we can all work together to keep the profession developing. [1] Special thanks to Diane Neubauer for suggesting PictureTalk and MovieTalk as activities here.
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Post on a post: My recent ACTFL talk on Story Structure, Culture, and teaching Social Justice11/21/2017 My co-presenter, Diane Neubauer, summarized our talk on her blog, here. The presentation slides are there to download as well.
One note on teaching social justice: I'm just now learning about how this is done in the field (in research and in classroom practice). This presentation only gives brief mention of how teachers can write socially critical ideas into their stories. I hope to learn more starting now, so my future presentations can do better to place social justice and critical perspectives at the center of my discussions. I was at a STARTALK conference a few years ago, where I sat at a table with teachers of several languages. The topic of student choice came up, and I said something like, "A lot of my students go right for Spongebob. Even my college students think he's funny." One older Hindi teacher sitting across from me gave a deep scowl, which I interpreted as "We need to teach about the culture of the target language, and nothing else." I've since then thought about roles for target culture instruction, in terms of a balance with what learners themselves want to talk about.
One benefit I've noticed in learning about culture is that I find it useful, interesting, and fun to gain insights on who speaks these languages. Where do they live? What do they eat? What do they do? This third question reminds me of my own time living in China, where a lot of my conversations revolved around things that were Chinese, like local events and geography, as well as things that were not Chinese, like foreign movies, books, and music. I remember having long discussion about Game of Thrones in Chinese with an MA classmate. I have also noticed a cost to doing target-culture-only activities, particularly when the information is new to many learners in a classroom. This has to do with who possesses the knowledge required to contribute to the conversation, and who does not. Implicitly, expert/non-expert roles emerge. Only the teacher, and possibly one or a few students who have spent time in the target language community, can be experts. Everyone else is left to be non-experts, without relevant knowledge to contribute. Non-experts are forced to either ask receptive questions ("what's that?"), or to remain passive as listeners. By contrast, in a whole-class story collaboration, the teacher can contribute cultural knowledge in the forms of locations, people, foods and other things from the target language community, and learners can contribute knowledge from their own experience and preferences. This also allows learners to use any language (words or longer utterances) they can at any given point in time. But a culture-only discussion requires participants to know the exact language for what the teacher has presented as relevant in each moment. This restricts the selection space in both language and content that participants can offer as relevant. Again learners are left as passive receivers of language and knowledge, prohibited from active contributions. Given more time, I did see my own college students begin to recycle Chinese historic people, places, and foods into our later discussions, after they had gotten to know these people from my recurring introductions. So I'm not arguing here for the abolition of culture-presentations. But I am advising that teachers consider both the benefits and costs of this practice, to find a balance. |
Reed Riggs (Author)
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