Performed Culture in Chinese Language Education

A Culture-Based Approach for U.S. Collegiate Contexts

By (author) Guangyan Chen

Publication date:

22 June 2020

Length of book:

248 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

Dimensions:

228x161mm
6x9"

ISBN-13: 9781498584951

Performed Culture in Chinese Language Education: A Culture-Based Approach for U.S. Collegiate Contexts elaborates on a cultural awareness-oriented, cultural performance-based, and cross-cultural communication-focused foreign language pedagogical paradigm—Performed Culture Approach — in the context of U.S. collegiate Chinese language education. Guangyan Chen draws on the data collected through questionnaires, comparisons between this pedagogy and mainstream pedagogical frameworks, and analyses of curricular development, lesson plans, and classroom discourses. Chen promotes the performed culture approach by delineating the theoretical framework of this pedagogy, reporting studies that empirically support cultural primacy in Chinese language education, and illustrating this pedagogy through analyses of a curricular structure, a lesson plan, and classroom discourses. Chen shows how this pedagogy addresses the gaps between the social need for global citizens and the insufficient integration of culture into foreign language education. The performed culture approach also addresses the overall drop in U.S. collegiate foreign language enrollment as this pedagogy connects foreign language programs to university missions and social needs.

Preface

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Introduction

Part 1: The Needs for a Culture-Based Chinese Language Pedagogy

1. The Needs for a Culture-Based Chinese Language Pedagogy

2. Conceptualizing Culture in the U.S. Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL) Setting

3. Approaches to Integrating Culture into CFL Education

Part 2: Culture-Based Language Pedagogy: Performed Culture Approach (PCA)

4.Performed Culture Approach

5.Comparisons between PCA and Mainstream Pedagogical Frameworks

6.Comparisons between PCA and Two Alternatives to Mainstream Pedagogical Frameworks

Part 3: Studies Empirically Supporting Cultural Primacy in CFL Education

7.Culture Provides Important Criteria for Assessing CFL learners’ Oral Performances

8.Culturally Ingrained Perceptions Outweigh Teaching Experience When Teachers Assess a CFL Learner’s Oral Performance

Part 4: Applications of PCA

9.A PCA-Oriented Chinese Curriculum

10.PCA-Adapted Lesson Plans

11.PCA-Based Classroom Discourse

References

Index

About the Author

"Although foreign language professionals all agree that culture instruction is important in language instruction, the field of foreign language education has yet to find an effective pedagogical framework to truly integrate culture instruction with language instruction. This book has provided both theoretical and empirical grounds for a culture-based language pedagogy and argued convincingly that the Performed Culture Approach (PCA) holds the potential to change the mindset and practices of Chinese language teachers, and perhaps for other languages as well. The link between a culture-based language pedagogy and global citizenship proposed by the author is sure to revitalize the field of foreign language education in the years to come."