Your Way, My Way,
Dongdong
Chen,
Lei Liang,
Fangzhou Zhang,
Yanfei Li, Seton Hall
University/Saint Dominic Academy
Is there a right way to
teach Chinese as a foreign language? If so, what is that? Can that be readily applied
to different students? What is the best approach or method to teach Chinese
characters? How can we teach Chinese culture so that learners can understand the
Chinese cultural practices, products as well as perspectives, etc? Chinese
teachers have constantly asked these questions, and tried tirelessly to seek
satisfactory answers (e.g., Bai, 1996; Loke, 2002; Chen, 2009). This panel, which consists of 3
panelists and one discussant, will attempt to examine and explore these
questions from a K-12 point of view. Lei Liang will discuss how he engaged
learners to develop a mnemonic way to learn Chinese characters. By playing with
the character components and telling stories about the relationship among them,
he helps learners to memorize characters in a fun and easier way. Both Fangzhou
Zhang and Yanfei Li will focus on the teaching of culture. Zhang will talk about how she
designed meaningful curricula, thematic units, and lessons to immerse young
beginners, while Li will talk about how she integrated hands-on activities
and projects in a two-week intensive culture program. Dongdong Chen will comment
on pros and cons of each of these teaching approaches, methods, and discuss the
implications for the teaching and learning of Chinese. Through presentation and
discussion, we hope to help the audience to develop an effective way to teach
their students.
Deconstruction and Storytelling:
Teaching American High School Students Chinese Characters
Due to the differences
between Chinese characters and English words, it is sometimes very difficult
for American students to memorize Chinese characters, especially at the
beginning of the learning process. This paper introduces a method that aims to
help American high school students to memorize Chinese characters efficiently.
The basic mechanism is that a class as whole will first deconstruct the
characters into simple and easy-to-remember parts. And a story will be designed
(either by students or teacher) to link these parts together. The unique
feature about this method is that most of the stories are based on elements
associated with American culture, instead of reflecting the true historical
facts behind the characters. The reason is that only a few Chinese characters
have retained their original meanings and shapes after three thousand years of
revolution (e.g. 安, 穿, 好). Explaining the revolution would only cause
more confusion, and turn the class into a highly teacher-centered lecture (e.g.
队vs. 坠, 冬 vs. 终). A number
of characters and their stories will be used to demonstrate this method. The
strengths and weaknesses will then be discussed, followed by a possible
solution to the weaknesses.
Experiencing
Culture in the Theme-based Chinese Language Teaching
Fangzhou
Zhang
Culture is the
most important context for language learning. However, many teachers found it
difficult to develop activities for teaching culture related context in the
early stages of second-language acquisition. According to Curtain and Dahlberg
(2010), ‘the cultural goals can best be met by giving learners experiences with
the culture rather than by talking about cultural facts and artifacts. (p.278)’
This standard orientation calls for integrated thematic planning which tend to
create classroom experiences to help students build cultural understanding
during language learning. This paper will focus on immersion Chinese language
teaching in the beginning-level classes in grades K-8. I will first talk about
how to design effective and meaningful curricula, units and lessons in order to
carry out the culture context in language teaching process for young beginners.
I will then analyze the real teaching experience with the theme-based approach.
I will finally share the experience of how I created the thematic unit topic to
help the kids understand Chinese culture in the summer camp, and how the kids
reacted to the class.
Teach
Chinese Culture through Chinese Culture Week
Yanfei
Li
Seton
Hall University/Saint Dominic Academy
Teaching Chinese culture is an important part of the Chinese
language teaching process. Given the
limited time available in a high school classroom it is worth considering what
to teach and how to teach it.
References
Bai,
Jianhua. (1996). Some Thoughts on
the Notion of Better Methods. Journal
of Chinese Language
Teachers Association,
31/2: 73-86.
Curtain, Helena and
Dahlberg, Carol Ann. (2010), Languages and Children--Making
the Match: New
Languages for Young Learners, Grades K-8 (4th Edition), Allyn
& Bacon.
Chen,
Dongdong. (2009). 美国学生中文教学法问卷调查报告,International
Chinese Language Education,
Vol. (3): 52- 62.
Loke, K. (2002). Approaches to the Teaching and
Learning of Chinese: A Critical Literature Review
and a Proposal for a Semantic,
Cognitive and Metacognitive Approach. Journal
of Chinese
Language Teachers Association,
37/1: 65-112.