Volume 15, Supplement, October 2018 DOI: 10.56040/e-flt.152
Wai Meng Chan & Sasiwimol Klayklueng
Critical Cultural Awareness and Identity Development: Insights from a Short-Term Thai Language Immersion (pp. 129–147)
Promoting and cultivating intercultural competence is an important goal of foreign language education today. In-country language immersion, an out-of-class component of the foreign language curriculum, has the potential to contribute in this respect, as it gives learners first-hand experience in the target language country and allows them to discover and partake in the local community’s sociocultural practices. This article focuses on a study of the impact of a short-term in-country language immersion in Chiangrai, Thailand, on the development of critical cultural awareness and identity in Singapore university students of Thai as a foreign language. The study adopted a case study approach and collected qualitative data on two subjects through journals, interviews, activity observation and document inspection. The data were analysed based on Byram’s (1997, 2008) model of intercultural competence, Lave and Wenger’s (1991) Situated Learning Theory and their notion of legitimate peripheral participation, and Weinreich’s (2003) Identity Structure Analysis. The findings suggest that the immersion programme in Chiangrai provided the learners with access to legitimate peripheral participation, which helped them gain insights into the target language culture, negotiate and (co-)construct new cultural meanings and knowledge, and critically appraise both the target language and the native cultures. These experiences and a growing identification with the Thai culture prompted them to re-examine and question their own culture and identity, but led eventually to the re-affirmation and re-construction of their own identity, as they sought to extend their value systems by adopting and aspiring towards Thai traits and practices that they found desirable.
Elli Suzuki & Daniel Kwang Guan Chan
Pluricultural Competence of Asian Language Students in France (pp. 148–162)
Thanks to globalization, language learners can easily come into contact with peoples of target cultures through the Internet, student/professional mobility, low-cost travel, and so on. However, frequent contact with people of other cultures does not necessarily lead to successful communication with them. Concepts such as “intercultural communicative competence” (Byram, 1997/2009), “sociocultural competence” (Byram and Zarate, 1997) and “pluricultural competence” (Coste, Moore and Zarate, 1997) are useful in helping us explain why this is so. By referring to the components of such a competence, we will examine case studies of French-speaking university students learning an Asian language (Japanese, Korean, Mandarin). The analysis of information gathered through questionnaires and semi-guided interviews with individual students helps us obtain insights on how pluricultural competence was acquired in these students, and more generally, to understand the factors at play in the development of this competence in foreign language learners.
The use of images has been a long established practice in Hindi language teaching. However, since 2015, I have also been experimenting with the use of online comics in teaching Hindi and have found that it has had beneficial learning outcomes. In an attempt to understand how comics may help in language teaching, I shall first explore how comic studies by scholars like Scott McCloud (1994) and narrative studies scholars such as Nick Lowe (2000) give new insights into the relationship between comics and narratives and ways to conceptualise language teaching. I shall then situate my own use of comics in teaching and discuss how the use of comics, images and narratives can help to convey non-verbal aspects of socio-cultural communication. I also include a discussion on current limitations on possibilities for studies measuring the impact on learning outcomes of the use of comics in teaching Hindi. I conclude by suggesting three reasons for using comics in language teaching. First, studies of the use of comics in other disciplines have shown favourable learning outcomes. Second, anecdotal observations from Hindi teaching have indicated their value to contextualise the socio-cultural aspects of Hindi language usage for students. Third, that comics can fit into a conceptual model for language teaching involving three elements, scaffolding materials, authentic materials and comic materials as a support to stimulate and motivate students in their language studies.
Since the rise of India as an economic powerhouse in the world scene, more and more North American universities have started taking an interest in South Asia. In the catalogue of courses offered on South Asia, Hindi-Urdu as a foreign language is a prominent one. Are Hindi and Urdu two languages? Or one? If two, what are the grounds to offer them as one course? And if one, why do many universities teach them as separate languages or teach only one of them? Without going into the details of the socio-political aspect of the Hindi-Urdu controversy, in this paper, I will only deal with the rationale behind bringing Hindi and Urdu into one course offering, and the pros and cons of such an academic approach and its justifications. I will also discuss some of the challenges faced by Hindi-Urdu teachers: lack of textbooks, Hindi (Devanagari) first/Urdu (Nastaliq) first approach, assessment, and so forth.
Lynne N. Li & Bob Bao Q. Gao
Education Leadership and Curriculum Design: Towards Quality Chinese Language Programmes in Australian Universities (pp. 192–205)
Multilingual and multicultural knowledge and skills can facilitate advancing university degrees as modern-day education becomes increasingly globally oriented. Building high levels of language proficiency has become a strong force in shaping university curricula. This paper addresses how best to accommodate the needs of Chinese language learners in an Australian university from the perspective of education leadership with a multidisciplinary approach toward curriculum design through Chinese language and culture activities. The discussion starts with the traditional role of needs analysis, stretches to education leadership in relation to standards and professionalism, and finally weaves with the primary accounts of student and teacher experiences obtained through university course experience survey data. Student enrolment data are also cited to allow exploration into the increasingly multivariate needs of Chinese language learners. The nature of learners’ needs in relation to their linguistic and cultural backgrounds and career pathway is examined. The aim of this paper is to explore the options for conceptualising and re-conceptualising a framework for analysing the needs of learners and curriculum intervention for acquiring language communication skills, academic learning skills, disciplinary programme skills and leadership skills. The context for multidisciplinary and multimode offerings of university language programmes is outlined. The implications of the changing nature of quality university language programmes are also showcased. Finally, the impact of policy-making decisions on university curricula is highlighted in relation to the postmodern role of education leadership.
Chin-Chin Tseng
An Analysis of Chinese Practice Teachers’ Online Teaching and its Impact on Teacher Training in a Global Context (pp. 206–213, in Chinese)
This research uses the problem-based teaching method to explore the problems that pre-service teachers of Chinese as a second language have in online teaching. This paper summarizes the problems generated by the pre-service teachers in online interactive teaching. Based on the analysis of online teaching examples, a comprehensive content knowledge of Chinese linguistics and professional teaching content are a prerequisite for L2 Chinese pre-service teachers. In addition to the content knowledge, it is necessary to provide experiential learning online with a global Chinese teaching context. In order to be aware of the second language acquisition process, pre-service teachers need to learn to adjust teacher language according to learners’ proficiency level. Through experiential teaching, practical teaching skills can be developed, and the pre-service teachers have opportunities to explore how to use the online teaching platform effectively for L2 teaching purpose. Through the problem-oriented teaching method, the pre-service teachers can examine the teaching cases for themselves and their peers, note the problems encountered in teaching, reflect upon the teaching process, and explore effective ways to solve problems, from actual online teaching experience, self-reflection, and peer feedback, under the guidance of teacher educator to improve their online teaching quality. Through discussing examples from videos of online interactive teaching, the findings of the research can also be applied to the curriculum design for online Chinese teacher education.
Jyh Wee Sew
Effectiveness of Onomatopoeic Approach in Foreign Language Teaching (pp. 214–228, in Malay)
More studies should be conducted to confirm whether peer review instruction is effective when we compare the text quality before and after peer review training with a control class. The present study aims to measure the impact of scaffolded peer review training on the quality of texts produced by students of French as a foreign language in a Vietnamese university. An experiment of peer review training was carried out during a semester in an experimental class of twenty freshmen under peer-assisted condition (PA), compared to a control class of twenty otherfreshmen producing texts individually (IND). A systematic peer review training programme was conducted in the PA class with teacher modelling, customized peer review checklists, sheets of advice on how to give and receive feedback and collective correction sessions. Fortyafter-trainingdrafts from the PA and IND classes and twenty semi-structured interviews from the PA class were collected. Quantitative and qualitative data analyses showed that the PA class made better progress than the IND class in terms of total gain scores, task completion, ideas development, coherence and grammar. Our findings show positive impact of clearly structured peer review training on text quality in FFL context.
Reviews
Daniel Kwang Guan Chan & Hock Huan Goh
Review of “Teaching and Learning Chinese in Higher Education: Theoretical and Practical Issues” (pp. 229–234)