Integrating Behavioral Culture Instruction into Teaching Chinese Language

Xizhen Qin (秦希贞), Ph. D. Assistant professor

World Languages Education University of South Florida

xizhenqin@usf.edu

Fostering Global Citizens:

Integrating Culture

in Teaching Chinese Language

Survey: Culture Courses in the Chinese Program

• Does your school have Chinese culture course?

• How often is the Chinese culture course?

• What are the contents of your Chinese culture course?

Questions to be discussed

• Why culture matters?

• What aspects of culture should be taught?

• How to teach culture in a Chinese language program?

Why culture matters?

1. Language and culture are inseparable

2. Culture determines the meaning of language

Discourse analysis:

“What do you want to drink?” “No, thanks.”

“where are you heading for?” “what are you going to do?”

“Come to my house for a dinner when you have time.”

3.Language is not the only tool of communication

• The most important purpose of learning Chinese is to communicate.

• Non-verbal message transmit 65 percent of meaning, in the form of kinesic behavior (gestures), paralanguage (voice qualities, laughing, yawning, etc.) and proxemics (spatial factors) (Hammerly, 1982, p.181) .

What is culture? Two Cs Model Hammerly’s

Model Three Ps Model Two Ms Model

Little C Behavioral Culture

Cultural perspectives Cultural mind/themes

Cultural practices

Cultural

manifestations

Big C

Informational

culture

Cultural products

Achievement culture

(Yu，2008)

What kind of culture should be taught?

• 答复发生法发发放

Informational

culture (such as

Chinese history)

Achievement culture （such as Peking opera）

Behavioral Culture

（such as going to

a banquet )

The one that is most closely related to communication.

What is behavioral culture?

• The sum of everyday life.

----Hector Hammerly, 1982, p.515

• The common daily practices and beliefs that define an individual and dictate behavior in a specific society.

----Christensen and Warnick, 2006, p.12

Examples of behavioral culture

• [Behavioral culture] includes such common things as eating habits and manners, the manner of greeting, the protocols of traveling by public transportation, how to conduct a transaction at a bank, how to order a meal in a restaurant, how one treats siblings, parent-child relationships, teacher-student relationships, how emotions are displayed, and how gifts are exchanged.

---- Christensen and Warnick (2006, p.13）

Components of behavioral culture

Verbal behavior

• Do not treat language as a system of symbol.

• Do not educate students to be linguists.

• Use natural and authentic language.

Non-verbal behavior 非言语行为

• Gestures, facial expressions, spatial factor, etc.

Cultural perspective/minds

• Cultural values, customs, cultural habits, etc.

How does behavioral culture relate to CFL?

• The goal of teaching Chinese is to teach students to do things in Chinese.

• Different tasks at different stages.

• Speaking a foreign language is actually a skill.

How to teach behavioral culture?-0

A new pedagogic outlook:

• Teacher’s non-traditional roles

• Classroom activities

• Language environment

• Selection of instructional materials

Teaching demonstration

• http://nealrc.osu.edu/project/teacher-training-videos

How to teach behavioral culture？-1

• Teacher’s non-traditional roles ：

Movie director

Sports coach

Performer

Stage designer

Game referee

How to teach behavioral culture？ -2

• Classroom activities

Students’ performance is the major classroom activity.

How to teach behavioral culture？ -3

• Language environment：

Language immersion from day 1 of learning Chinese;

Learning Chinese in cultural contexts.

How to teach behavioral culture？ -4

• Selection of instructional materials

Multi-media materials, such as

1) CCC: Chinese: Communicating in the Culture. By Galal Walker & Yong Lang, Ohio State University.

2) CLIC: Chinese: Learning in the Culture. By Eric Shepherd, Xizhen Qin, Qiong Wu, Peggy Liu. University of South Florida

FACT Class

• http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNDQ5MzMxNzQw.html?from=y1.2-1-87.4.13-1.1-1-2-12

Teaching demo

• Target expressions: hi, teacher, please, thanks, you are welcome

Setting：in front of a elevate Roles：a teacher and a student Scripts： Student：how are you, Mr./Ms. **! Teacher：Hi！ （the student pushes the button for the teacher and asks the

teacher to go first）：Please, Mr./Ms. **! Teacher：Thanks Student : You are welcome .

Students’ feedbacks

• I do like this teaching method, it’s a learn by doing, and many times by listening to your fellow classmates your better able to understand the scenario of the dialogue.

• I believe that this is the best way to learn to speak a language. Sitting in class and just reading from a book is not conducive to learning to communicate with native speakers.

• Forcing yourself to stand in front of a class and recite a dialogue in a language you barely know is not easy or comfortable, but the feeling makes you study harder. If we did not have to be in front of our peers performing on a daily basis, I do not think we would work as hard.

• I really like it because performance is the best way to learn any language.

• I think the method is excellent. I’ve taken other language classes in high school and the traditional teaching method for foreign languages isn’t very helpful.

• I think that the performance-based style is great for our listening comprehension (which is very important), it forces us to be immersed into the language, and overall it increases the rate at which we retained the information through repetitions (which eventually leads to fluentness).

Conclusion

The teaching of behavioral culture is not only feasible, but also more effective. When speaking the target language, students’ behaviors are culturally more appropriate and better accord with the rules and norms of the target culture, which smoothes the path towards more successful intercultural communication.