Teacher Voices in Chinese Language Teaching: Personal Reflections on Culture

151 Pages·2023·3.618 MB·

by  Scott Smith

PALGRAVE STUDIES IN
TEACHING AND LEARNING
CHINESE
Teacher Voices in
Chinese Language
Teaching
Personal Refl ections on Culture
Scott Smith
Palgrave Studies in Teaching and Learning Chinese
Series Editors
Michael Singh
Centre for Educational Research
Western Sydney University
Penrith, NSW, Australia
Jinghe Han
School of Education
Western Sydney University
Penrith, NSW, Australia
Palgrave Studies in Teaching and Learning Chinese is a Pivot series
designed for teachers, teacher education candidates and teacher educators
working in the field of Chinese language education. Despite the world-
wide growth in school-based Chinese language education it has not yet
been accompanied by a strong program of educational research for teacher
professional learning. This series provides an internationally significant
forum by bringing together research from around the world to inform
school-based Chinese language education. Specifically, this series draws on
a wealth of evidence from studies of Chinese learning and teaching, weav-
ing together theoretical study of language education and real-world expe-
rience of student-centred, learning-focused practices. The series uses
theoretically-informed and empirically-grounded evidence to inform the
professional knowledge and practices of teaching, learning and using
Chinese.
Scott Smith
Teacher Voices in
Chinese Language
Teaching
Personal Reflections on Culture
Scott Smith
Morling College
Macquarie Park, NSW, Australia
ISSN 2946-2479 ISSN 2946-2487 (electronic)
Palgrave Studies in Teaching and Learning Chinese
ISBN 978-3-030-89212-8 ISBN 978-3-030-89213-5 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89213-5
© The Author(s) 2022
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C
ontents
1 Who is Teaching Who What? Chinese as a Foreign
Language Teaching in Australian Schools 1
2 Intercultural Competence as a Goal of Language Learning:
What Are Chinese Teachers Doing with Culture? 33
3 A Way to Discover Culture in Language 63
4 Teacher Voices on Thoughts About Language and Culture
Teaching 93
5 The Way Forward 129
Appendix A: Online Survey for CFL Teachers 137
Appendix B: Interview Questions (Part A) 141
Index 143
v
L f
ist of igures
Fig. 1.1 Quality Teaching Framework (https://education.nsw.gov.au/
teaching- and- learning/professional- learning/scan/past- issues/
vol- 36%2D%2D2017/quality- teaching- in- our- schools) 8
Fig. 1.2 Interculturality and pedagogy in flux amongst teachers of
Chinese in Australian schools 17
Fig. 1.3 Shifts in Chinese language learner enrolments in Australian
schools (visual representation only) 18
Fig. 1.4 Journeys of second language and heritage Chinese language
learners 20
Fig. 1.5 Presentation of cultural practices, cultural values, and cultural
identity in two fields of learning 22
Fig. 2.1 Misalignment of identity and cultural layers 51
Fig. 2.2 Alignment of identity and cultural layers 52
Fig. 2.3 Awareness and adjustment of self, identity, and culture 52
Fig. 2.4 Sharing and shifting as a result of communities of practice
participation 53
Fig. 4.1 Deconstruction of Chinese character: ‘樓’ (building) 103
Fig. 4.2 Deconstruction of 繁 into its component parts 107
Fig. 4.3 The relationship between idiom, belief, and practice 110
vii
L t
ist of abLes
Table 1.1 Distribution of participants 9
Table 1.2 Eight areas of development in intercultural competence 13
Table 1.3 NESA eligibility for Stage 6 (Grades 11&12) language courses 19
Table 1.4 Number of primary and secondary students of Chinese in
each Australian state/territory in 2008 and 2015 23
Table 1.5 Number of students studying Year 12 Chinese in NSW and VIC 25
Table 1.6 Proportion of Year 12 tertiary-recognised language
enrolments by language, Australia 2006–2019 26
Table 1.7 Languages spoken at home (by household), Australia,
2011, 2016 26
Table 3.1 Frequencies of selected types of compliment responses in
Chinese 65
ix
CHAPTER 1
Who is Teaching Who What? Chinese
as a Foreign Language Teaching
in Australian Schools
Abstract This chapter surveys the historical and current state of uptake of
Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL) in Australian schooling (primary and
secondary). The question of whether Australia, through its education sys-
tem, is developing more Chinese language users cannot be answered
through simple data analysis. Even though numbers of Chinese language
learners appear high in relation to other foreign languages, the comparison
is fraught with idiosyncratic issues such as the reality of large numbers of
Chinese heritage background learners and low numbers of learners for
whom Chinese is entirely ‘foreign’. There is growth in the number of learn-
ers, but this must be interpreted in light of who the learners are. For instance,
if a majority of teachers and learners have a Chinese heritage, then ‘CFL’
might be an unhelpful term. Put another way, how can ‘Chinese teaching
Chinese to the Chinese’ be counted in assessments of the growth or decline
of CFL in Australia? The issue is complex for Australia, where over 500,000
residents were born in Mainland China. The chapter begins with an over-
view of the basis for this book. It presents the author’s personal background,
as well as the research context in which the book is situated. An overview of
the research methodology and participants is presented and the key concept
of ‘intercultural competence’ is defined with reference to the literature.
Keywords Chinese as a foreign language • CFL • Intercultural
competence • Quality Teaching Framework
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1
Switzerland AG 2022
S. Smith, Teacher Voices in Chinese Language Teaching, Palgrave
Studies in Teaching and Learning Chinese,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89213-5_1
2 S. SMITH
The limits of my language mean the limits of my world
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)
Why This Book?
The motivation for this book comes from personal observations made
from within the language teaching community, and from experiences liv-
ing in Australia and China. As a non-Chinese background teacher of
Chinese language, my perspective is different from that of my Chinese
colleagues. As an L2 learner of Chinese I have a specific viewpoint from
which to reflect and comment on the role of culture in Chinese language
teaching and what it might mean to develop intercultural competence. L1
Chinese speakers generally grow up within a Chinese cultural context, and
over 90% of Chinese language teachers in Australia possess this heritage
(Orton, 2016). I, however, studied Chinese language and learned about
the diverse culture of Chinese people as an adult L2 learner in China over
a nine-year period between the ages of 32 and 40. Having grown up in
Australia and having worked as a secondary teacher prior to living in
China, my own pedagogy has been shaped by Australian teacher education
and Australian public schooling. Following my return from China, and
until now, I have experience teaching Chinese at all levels, including pre-
K, primary, secondary, and university level. With this background, I find
myself in the so-called third place (Kramsch & Zhang, 2018), having the
sense of not belonging completely in either context, and yet possessing a
unique appreciation of each context from within and without. In other
words, given the extended period living and working in China, I have
taken a middle ground perspective (Leung et al., 2018), where, without
wanting to essentialize the two positions, Chinese and Australian perspec-
tives on interactions and language learning are held in tension. Chen
(2002, p. 183) discusses the notion of ‘middle’ in Chinese thought as
follows:
The term’s (middle ground) philosophical origins are deeply rooted in the
“middle way” teachings of such influential philosophers as Confucius and
Lao Tzu (the founder of Taoism), where we find its true meaning. In its
intended sense, the word “middle” conveys a dynamic concept, an active
“harmonious integration” of opposites rather than a reactive compromise
between them.