Sociedades dependientes y asociadas

Class level: Intermediate

Context: The teacher gave some examples of proverbs, including Tian xia wu nan shi,

zhi pa you xin ren (天下无难事，是怕有心人: Nothing is difficult to the man who will

try hard). When discussing the meaning of it, a conversation between the teacher and one student occurred.

01 T: Zhege shi shenme yisi (?)

What’s the meaning of this (idiom)? 02 S: You Xin Ren:: shibushi huairen de yisi (?)

Does You Xin Ren mean “bad person”?

03 T: You Xin Ren shi huairen ma (?)

Is You Xin Ren bad person?

150

You xin ren means if you really want to accomplish something,

05 ranhou ni jiu hui qu jihua (.) qu nuli (.)

and you will plan it, work hard for it.

06 zheyang de ren women jiao You Xin Ren.

This kind of person we call You Xin Ren.

In Line 2, the student misunderstood You Xin Ren (有心人) as huairen (坏人, bad person), thus the proverb would denote “nothing is difficult unless there is a bad guy”. In this logic, getting things done was related to the person’s quality of being kind-hearted, instead of being hardworking. In Line 4-6, the teacher explained the real meaning using personal pronouns ni (你, “you” in singular form) and women (我们, “we” in plural form). By using ni, the student was invited to resonate with the scenario; by using women, the teacher implied that the value is shared by the Chinese society. In this way, the teacher was inviting the student to think from a shared Chinese perspective, that is, hardworking is a key to success.

The learning of cultural values through suyu is a common point made by interview participants from the intermediate class (Jack, Irene, Coco). These cultural values were explicitly integrated into the instruction. However, as will be shown later (Section 6.3.2), cultural values also implicitly permeated the classroom discourse. Cases in which different values between teachers and students were evident could have provided resources for in- depth cultural interpretation, but they were not fully utilised in the Sydney-Beijing program, which can be seen as a limitation of this program (Section 6.6).

Advanced class: regional culture and expressions with cultural connotations

Since most advanced learners already had much knowledge about Chinese culture, they were very impressed by the access to variations of it through the ICS, such as Beijing local culture and other regional culture.30 Although students from other levels of class also got insights into various Beijing and regional culture aspects through the immersion, advanced learners particularly related it more to the formal course content. For example, Alice (Female, Age 20, Heritage, Advanced, email) described in the interview how local food culture was integrated into the learning materials: “One of the texts was ‘chat about Beijing people’. The text talks about the different types of food in China, how people from different parts of China enjoy

151

different types of food.” She was also impressed by the learning of some Beijing dialect, such as Kandashan (侃大山, to chat idly) and Gala (旮旯, every nook and cranny).

For advanced learners, the learning of the Beijing dialect helped them be integrated into the local community through the device of accent. To give a typical example, Cheng (Female, Age 20, Heritage, Advanced, F2F), whose mother tongue is Cantonese, mentioned in the interview:

“I was in Guangzhou (a Southern city in China) before, but then when I went to Beijing I found the ways people talk are different. I think it’s good to touch on these dialects in class, since I would feel easier if I go out and talk to people when traveling around.”

The finding here is reminiscent of the main argument in Chapter 5 on authentic language learning – language variation should be a part of language learning rather than devalued as “non-standard” by Chinese language teachers.

Apart from Beijing regional culture, advanced learners also learned vocabulary, expressions and concepts that are rich in cultural connotations. For example, Linjia (Female, Age 19, Heritage, Advanced, email) mentioned paichang (排场, ostentation and

extravagance) which she thought was useful for the understanding of social relationships. Alice (Female, Age 20, Heritage, Advanced, email) mentioned the expression liangyan

leiwangwang31 _{(两眼泪汪汪) that denotes the Chinese sense of nostalgia. Cheng (Female,}

Age 20, Heritage, Advanced, F2F) gave examples of some newly emerged vocabulary developed under the influence of globalisation and the Internet, such as zhai (宅) and

Yimei’er32 _{(伊妹儿). All these words carry rich cultural meanings and cannot be fully}

understood without knowing the embedded connotations.

This sub-section has found that a majority of students perceived that a range of cultural aspects were well-integrated into the course content, and they demonstrated level-relevant patterns of interests and focuses on culture learning. The topics of culture learning mentioned reflect the focus of culture teaching in China and the research interests of Chinese scholars. Some Chinese scholars define Chinese culture as having three levels: ideological culture

31 _{Literally means “tears in eyes”. It was originated from the proverb laoxiang jian laoxiang, liangyan}

leiwangwang (老乡见老乡，两眼泪汪汪) – used when people from the same hometown meet or bump into somewhere else, the sense of intimacy makes them so happy that they even burst into tears.

32 _{Zhai originated from the Japanese word taku, used in Chinese to describe people who always stay at home.}

152

(Yishi xingtai wenhua, 意识形态文化, e.g., politics, economics, law, social mechanism), folk Culture (Minsu wenhua, 民俗文化, e.g., etiquettes, customs, high culture, lifestyles), and Chinese traditional spiritual culture (Zhonghua chuantong jingshen wenhua, 中华传统精神 文化, e.g., values, beliefs, philosophy) (W. Zhang, 2014). Particularly, the importance of teaching cultural-specific vocabulary (wenhua cihui, 文化词汇, e.g., historical words, idioms, proverbs, words for objects or phenomenon specific to China) has been a major research interest of many Chinese scholars (e.g., L. Shi, 2013; Yanjun Wang, 2013; S. Zhang, 2012). It is a common belief that a cultural-specific vocabulary carrying rich hidden meanings is critical to communication in the Chinese language and the understanding of Chinese traditional spiritual culture. The culture-integrated course content in the Sydney-Beijing Program was apparently under the influence of these dominant thoughts in the field. As will be shown in later sections, these approaches are beneficial for students’ cultural learning to some extent, but are not adequate enough for in-depth cultural interpretation and intercultural learning.

The sub-section above has analysed student perceptions of the culture-integrated course content in class, which was explicitly integrated into language learning. However,

participation in classroom interactions is also an integral part of participating in the social system being learned (Section 5.3.2). Therefore, the next sub-section will explore students’ perceptions of the classroom discourse during the ICS which was constitutive of a more implicit dimension of in-class culture learning.

6.3.2 Learning through the classroom discourse: open-mindedness and humour

Apart from the explicitly integrated culture-related course content, students also gained cultural insights implicitly through the classroom discourse. One may expect that students would experience hierarchical and formal classroom discourse in China and gain insights into traditional Chinese values such as a high level of respectfulness to teachers and a formality of personal relationships. These features are indeed how the Chinese classroom with a

Confucius heritage is represented in the literature (e.g. Jia, 2006; Tang, 2010). However, the findings of this study differ from the previous literature and speak to the “new” or “non- traditional” classroom discourse in China. The two themes that emerged are open-mindedness and humour.

153

Open-mindedness

Students were fascinated by the fact that many social issues were open for discussion in class, contrary to their previous view that Chinese people were very conservative and “politically controlled” (Ying, Female, Age 70, Heritage, Advanced, F2F). For example, many students gave the example of the discussion of pollution issues they experienced in China. Since the program was carried out in winter, there were a few days with heavy smog. As Australian students had been living in a country taking pride in its superb natural environment, “sheltered” (Mary) from air pollution, they were concerned about the air quality in China. From the class observation, this issue was frequently raised by students in class across all levels, but the teachers were very open about the discussion and even integrated it into the learning process. Excerpt 6.2 is an example of the integration of the pollution issue into the learning of modal adverbs mingming (明明, clearly; obviously) and jianzhi (简直, really; virtually) (see Appendix I for the full version with Chinese characters).