Volume 10, Supplement, December 2013
ACTFL generic proficiency guidelines describe what learners are able to perform at various proficiency levels. These guidelines, in particular the oral proficiency guidelines (OPG), have been widely used to assess learners’ proficiency across institutions – via the oral proficiency interview (OPI) technique – irrespective of curriculum, teaching methods, and materials. Many institutions and organizations place great emphasis on such assessments in making decisions regarding placement, scholarship, and program evaluation. Although the usefulness of the OPG has been widely acknowledged, it is also recognized that the guidelines lack details regarding the specific features and characteristics of any particular language. As we know, each language carries specific linguistic, pragmatic, and cultural features that affect the descriptors of the various proficiency levels of a particular language. In the case of the Indonesian language, for example, tense is not a determining factor in defining proficiency. However, cultural aspects such as the use of pronouns, terms of address, and passive voice are important indicators of communicative ability at various levels. This paper will: 1) address the importance of developing descriptors of oral proficiency for Indonesian; 2) describe the significance of the collaborative process of developing the guidelines; and 3) explore some implications for the teaching of cultural competence in Indonesian.
This article discusses possible reasons behind the success of Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) Malang Indonesian abroad program 2010–2012. For this purpose, it will focus on the role of the teaching of descriptive Indonesian in the effective implementation of Communicative Language Teaching and in the learners’ high achievement in communicative competence as shown in the Oral Proficiency Interview test results provided by the American Councils of International Education. This discussion is based mostly on observations of Indonesian teaching programs in various institutions in Indonesia in the past five years as well as my active participation and interviews with the learners, peer tutors, and instructors during the CLS Malang programs in the summers of 2010–2012. In addition, the examination of various Indonesian curricula, syllabi and teaching materials in various institutions that teach Indonesian to native as well as non-native speakers will hopefully help to provide insights for more successful language abroad programs.
Learning a language entails learning its culture (Kramsch, 1993). There is a close relationship between language and culture that makes them inseparable in the teaching and learning process. Brooks (1960) made a distinction between ‘Culture’ with a capital ‘C’ – art, music, literature, politics, and so forth – and ‘culture’ with a small ‘c’ – the behavioral pattern and life style of everyday people. Nurturing learners’ cultural awareness holistically is necessary from the beginning of their learning process. Byram and Morgan (1994) stated that cultural learning has to take place as an integral part of language learning. This study describes the pro- cedures for implementing a project-based approach to nurture learners’ cultural awareness in a beginners’ level Indonesian language course offered to undergraduate students. Every semester, a cultural project is or- ganized beyond the classroom contact hours to give students hands-on experiences of the target culture. A survey was conducted to obtain students’ perceptions of the value of using a project-based approach to cultivate cultural awareness. The results of this study show that hands-on experiences implemented in the project have enriched students’ knowledge about the culture of Indonesia. The project supports and is an extension of what has been learned in class. It is an eye-opener and provides an insight into the target culture and also a means to enhance collaboration and good interactions among students and teachers.
Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Japan’s only university that specializes in area studies, has developed a new language education program for the purpose of encouraging the understanding of world issues through the study of foreign languages. Since 2005, we have been receiving a special funding in order to gather important articles from the Internet to use as teaching materials for the students majoring in Arabic, Turkish and Persian Studies. The students have also been posting Japanese translations of the articles on the University’s home page. For students, the responsibility of translating and presenting these articles to the public, as opposed to traditional methods, leads to not only an improvement in their translating skills, but also a bond between Japan and the respective area of study and a clear awareness of Japanese society’s culture and its relation to world. This, in turn, contributes to the education of people with a high level of language skills and the ability to cooperate with people from many different cultural backgrounds in order to work towards solutions for world problems. We are attempting to use the translation of authentic cultural texts from other regions to further these objectives, an example being the translation of a Malay comic by advanced students to be incorporated into the Malay Studies curriculum and perhaps published online for public dissemination.
Social media have been increasingly embraced by educators as an appealing platform to engage Generation Y learners academically, socially and culturally. This article reports preliminary findings of an ongoing research study that examines the use of social media (in particular, blogs and YouTube) in fostering learners’ cultural reflection and active construction of understanding in a foreign language. Data consist of blog entries and digital stories made by learners of Vietnamese as a foreign language. An analysis is made of the learners’ target cultural experiences using Moran’s (2001) cultural experiential approach. Findings are discussed with implications for using social media to integrate cultural learning in foreign language education, and suggestions for further research.
Sunil Kumar Bhatt
The Popular Culture of Bollywood in Teaching Hindi as a Foreign Language: Facilitator or Debilitator? (pp. 321–333)
In American and other western universities, a considerable part of student body of Hindi as a foreign language (HFL) courses comprises second and third generations of Indian diaspora “Heritage Learner” students. Living in a community, cultural ties are maintained with the help of some pan-Indian elements such as Indian festivals and the popular culture of Bollywood. Bollywood and Bollywood type soap operas have become a driving force in raising the interest and motivation of not only diasporic students, but also often ethnically non-Indian students too. Including Bollywood elements in HFL classes through songs, video clips of popular dialogue sequences, and posters of Hindi films keeps the students’ interest level very high. Often Bollywood type sequences can be used in a role play, script (for a film scene) writing activities or other communicative tools. There is also a downside to Bollywood in HFL teaching. As the stories of Bollywood movies are often unrealistic, so is the language used in them. There is excessive code switching between Hindi and English, and sometimes different dialects or even other cognate languages such as Punjabi, Marathi or Gujarati which can be potentially confusing and misleading for students. However, the incorporation of carefully selected Bollywood elements can enhance the students’ learning experience.
「敬語」は、形式の複雑さに加え、社会文化能力を必要とする日本語学習者にとって習得が難し い学習項目の一つである。そこで、本研究では、初級学習者に敬語を導入する際にテレビドラマを 活用することにより、「社会文化能力」を高め、さらに、「自己表現」としての敬語の意義に気づ きを促し、敬語の重要性についての認識を高める実践を行った。シンガポールの大学生初級学習者 44 名を対象に、敬語の基調となっているスピーチスタイルと、呼称の使い分けに焦点を当て、 「やまとなでしこ」という 12 時間ドラマを約 25 分間に編集した映像、および、それに関するタス クシート、空所補充に使うためのトランスクリプトなどを教材として作成した。そして、敬語導入 前と導入後に実施した事前・事後調査、および、授業のフィールドノートをデータとして、学習者 の「敬語」に関する知識や敬語学習に関する意識の変容について調査した。その結果、初級学習者 が敬語に抱いている誤解や理解困難な点、および、映像メディアの敬語学習への効果などが明らか になった。本稿では、その実践方法と調査結果を報告し、社会文化能力を高めるための一方法とし ての映像メディアの可能性について考察する。
One of the most difficult goals for learners of Japanese is to master keigo (polite language), which is a complex linguistic and socio-cultural phenomenon, but indispensable in any social con- text. In order to be able to master keigo, a vast amount of knowledge and skills, such as identifica- tion of cultural patterns and understanding of social, psychological and situational contexts, as well as the motivation to learn socio-culturally appropriate behavior are required. However, due to the basic function of keigo that creates a social hierarchy or rank, some resistance or mismatched cultural expectations can be seen among learners of Japanese. This article addresses such issues and reports on a practical study that attempted to raise socio-cultural awareness as well as the sig- nificance of keigo as ‘expressing self’ through the contextual analysis of a TV drama as an intro- duction to keigo for Japanese elementary level learners.
The present study was conducted with 44 bilingual English and Chinese speaking university students in Singapore. Twenty five minutes of TV drama edited down from a 12-hour drama series were used for viewing. In addition, task sheets, focusing on ‘address terms’ and ‘speech styles,’ as well as transcripts where target expressions are left blank, were developed and used as teaching materials in three lectures over a six-week period. Field notes about the discussion and feedback sessions after each class were taken and pre- and post-surveys were conducted to investigate learn- ers’ knowledge and changes in their perceptions and understanding of keigo.
The results revealed that elementary learners had some knowledge about keigo even prior to the formal teaching of keigo, but they tended to misunderstand that keigo is only used in business contexts and they linked the necessity of learning of keigo as to their plans to work for a Japanese company in the future. The results also indicated that the TV materials helped them to understand that keigo is widely used in various social contexts and it provides insights into speakers’ treatments of the situation, feelings and attitudes toward listeners, speakers’ identity, and so forth. Besides this, the article reports on the outcome of the practice, and discusses the teaching implications for keigo education, focusing on effective ways to use media materials for raising socio- cultural awareness. Through the discussion, the article argues that keigo is about much more than creating social differences and has referential functions that express ‘self.’ Thus, it is important to raise learners’ awareness about these aspects of keigo, which tend to be neglected in current teaching practice.