Building the Culture of Your Chinese Program:

Optimal Learning Experiences and Smooth K-16

Vertical Articulation

Eric Shepherd

University of South Florida

A Typical Example Conversation with a 3rd year high school Chinese student

Me: 您贵姓？

Student: 。。。。(no response)

Me: 你叫什么名字?

Student: 。。。(no response)

Me: 你叫什么名字？

Student: (long delay) “Oh, my name. 我的名字Megan.”

Another Typical Scenario Have developed rudimentary character recognition skills (not

reading skills) and rudimentary understandings of Chinese

grammar but have no awareness of what (how bad) they sound

in Chinese and no ability to use what they have learned

Have to return to beginning to “un-learn” what they have

“learned”-must develop concept of tones and ability to

accurately produce them, must learn how to use everything that

they “learned” previously, must “un-learn” American ways

they have been using Chinese

The Result Students get frustrated and quit studying Chinese

Students get frustrated with high school teacher for

not teaching them real skills and spend significant

extra time outside of class struggling to learn what

they thought they already knew

“Why didn’t she teach me anything?”

Vertical Articulation Even after investing significant amounts of time studying in

organized Chinese programs a large number of current high

school students still lack usable skills IN Chinese (linguistic or

cultural)

Most students who have had Chinese in high school, when

coming into the USF Chinese program, test into Chinese I,

which is an introductory course designed for students with zero

background

Those who have developed some introductory skills have

significant adaptation problems because they have to un-learn

or re-learn most of what they have learned

The Disconnect There is significant gap between what is happening in at

the K-12 level and what is happening in the USF Chinese

program (university level)

Not an isolated problem

Observed same learner characteristics in Florida, Iowa,

Ohio, Maryland, Kansas, Texas, and California K-12

settings

Learners Who Think They Know Chinese Often Lack…

Ability to use Chinese autonomously

Metacognitive awareness of their own production of Chinese

Understanding and awareness of Chinese behavioral culture

Understanding and awareness of Chinese interaction patterns/ways of

viewing the world (cognitive orientations)

Ability to establish intentions acceptable in Chinese culture

Listening comprehension skills

Ability to read in Chinese

Ability to write at more than the simple sentence level (familiarity with

Chinese discourse norms)

Ability to sustain attention in Chinese

Effective study habits associated with Chinese

Ability to accept utilize feedback on their performance

Learning Chinese Is Not Like Learning

Other Languages

Chinese is a Category IV language-requires significantly

more time to reach advanced levels of proficiency than

other languages!

Chinese is a tonal language-requires aural learning!

Chinese has a very different orthographic system-requires

knowledge of phonological system first!

Cultural gap is more significant-requires additional time to

develop cultural, behavioral, and cognitive skills

necessary to successfully interact in Chinese!

Implications Must work with foreign language supervisors/administrators to create own

Chinese model-may or may not nicely fit the Spanish/French/TESL/SLA

model at your school if model was not developed based on how Chinese is

most efficiently and effectively learned by Americans

Separate skills: reading, writing, speaking, listening

Must teach behavioral culture-coach new behaviors

Must coach students to cognitively organize information (think) in

completely new ways

Must understand how Americans efficiently learn Chinese so that you can

help students

Must build this into curriculum (most students do not know how to best go

about learning Chinese!)

Learning IN the Culture

Learning originates in concrete experience

Culture creates contexts in which meaning is

negotiated (Walker, 2000)

Culture and language are inseparable

Students learning Chinese need to have Chinese

cultural experiences

Learning IN the Culture

Culturally contextualized mimetic learning works best

There is typically no Chinese language or cultural environment

here (at your American school) so you must build it into the

program

Simulation of contexts in classroom (not traditional “role play”

but memorized dialogs are very useful)-purpose is to develop

memory, foster “empathy”, contextualize learning process,

include behavior, and set acceptable intentions in Chinese

Learning IN the CultureMany foreign language teachers think we should

relate things to what students know so that they can

learn easily so they use typical American contexts

Fosters thinking in English and ultimately culturally

inappropriate use of language in the case of Chinese

Contexts we use are all drawn from Chinese culture

Building Cultural Contexts Language learning is most effective when it is done in a cultural

context

Most notions of culture do not include behavioral culture

Without context students do not understand how to use the language they are learning

Without context difficult to move what is learned from short-term to long-term memory

Constructing controlled cultural contexts in the classroom

Much more complex than telling a student ABOUT a context

Without context difficult to provide students opportunity to gain GUIDED experience using the language or to provide feedback

Account for social dynamic involved in language use and learning

Creating Cultural Contexts Being exposed to a culture is not enough

There is no magical process of cultural osmosis. Culture is

learned behavior.

Learners must participate in on-going cultural activities to

learn new cultural behaviors

Must participate in meaningful roles in culturally

significant performances (can’t go through motions and

can’t be American in Chinese)

Move beyond guest, tourist, and performing monkey roles

in target culture

Creating Chinese Contexts Chinese culture is goal and standard

Learner not “becoming Chinese” but developing new set of

cultural skills to add to existing repertoire (Shepherd, 2005)

Gaining empathy/learning to understand world from new

perspective

Cannot negotiate meaning (COMMUNICATE) without it

Constructing Chinese Contexts

• Select contexts: most commonly occurring (IN CHINA!)

• Is this something that your students (not you) will

encounter/need to know how to do?

• Simulated context but real communication

• What kind of context?

• Not just “foreigner Chinese”

• Reduces “teacher talk”

Constructing Context• Specific but not too specific

• Applicable to other situations, transfer of knowledge

is possible

• Context must be clear; can be complex but students

must be able to immediately know where we are, who

we are, what time it is, and what we are doing

• Realistic context is important but even more important

is the linguistic/cultural task within the context must

be authentic communication

Raising Level of Expectations Goal of training students to use linguistically accurate

AND culturally appropriate Chinese (thinking in Chinese)

Break normal pattern of simplifying Chinese for the

students (setting them up for failure) to begin helping

students develop skills necessary to deal with real

(difficult) Chinese

Stop accepting less than accurate student performance

Learning Chinese Is Not a Spectator Sport

You can’t learn Chinese for your students

Students must develop new habits/behaviors if they are to be

successful interacting in Chinese culture over the long term

To develop new behaviors they must do things themselves =

autonomous learners with occasional guided/scaffolded

performances

Hearing it 100 times is not as effective as seeing it once

Seeing it 100 times is not as effective as doing it once

Fostering Use of Chinese Must utilize every opportunity to give exposure to authentic

and natural target language in contexts of use

Make Chinese the language of use with your students, inside

and outside the classroom

If you communicate with your students in English, you have

removed their motivation for learning Chinese from the

classroom and increased the amount of time it will take them to

learn Chinese!

Student Language Use In the Goal Move from text-based, character-based, or test-based

curriculum to skills/student performance-driven

Building a culture of use among teachers and students

Using target language in class and for real purposes

Using target language to give instructions

Using target language before and after class

Increasing amount of time STUDENTS use Chinese inside

and outside of class

Create a Culture and Community of Use

Learning Chinese, like any language, requires significant time

and commitment (but it is learnable)

By time child six years old, has been exposed to at least 22,000

hrs of language (estimate 10 hours/day)

Takes more than 40 years for student who spends two hours

each weekday in foreign language classes to get equal practice

time!

Students will not learn Chinese in your class; it requires more

practice than they can get in ANY Chinese class (or program)

Eliciting Student Performance Increase amount of student target language use in- and outside

class

Teacher-dominant model Students never get to speak

Parrot-model Students never have to do it themselves

Still have to gain this experience after they leave the classroom…when they realize this…..

Elicitation model Teacher creates opportunities for students to use what they have

learned in context

Students have opportunities to succeed and to fail themselves

Opportunities for contextualized feedback

Elicit Student Performance• Elicit: creating conditions in which the student can

produce the target language without your cues or help

(they have to have the opportunity to put the pieces

together themselves and application of new knowledge on

one’s own generates intrinsic motivation!)

• How can I get the students to use the target language

without telling them to use it? (not natural context of use)

• Embed target dialog in larger context of story

Elicit Performance Let students figure it out on their own (discovery learning;

don’t feed them (performing monkey)

Don’t ruin the fun of it for them, let students discover it on

their own

Most effective technique is to elicit the context and

student use rather than explanation or demonstration (行李/谢谢。。。椅子/请坐)

Extrapolating/Stretching Wait for students/give students room to extrapolate or expand

upon target within context

Only when appropriate for context

Only after appropriate Chinese culturally appropriate model is learned!

Otherwise = translation filter = CHINGLISH

Encourage adding contextually and culturally appropriate language and behavior

When one adds something, the next will do that and add something else of his/her own

Gradually complete the construction of the context

By the end of class, doing some pretty sophisticated things

Utilize Performance-Based Learning

Learning by through mimesis; learning by doing

The learner does not “know” something until she can

demonstrate it by doing it

Only way to develop ability to do something is to do it

Learner must have opportunities to fail at increasingly

higher levels

Doing meaningful things in culturally appropriate ways

All roles-must learn how to ask and answer, initiate and

respond

Performance-based Learning

Cultural (including linguistic code) learning can be facilitated by isolating recurrent structures and associated rules to be used in guided trial and error participation in commonly occurring contexts

Performances are learnable segments of culture/5 elements: 1) location; 2) time; 3) roles; 4) scripts; 5) audience

Developing new set of cultural skills; best learned through mimetic learning (performance, doing)

Use Cultural Reverse Engineering• Build in five elements of a performance

• Roles: Who are they? What is relationship?

• Audience: Who else is there? How does that change things?

• Time: What time is it?

• Location: Where are we?

• Script (What are they saying and what are they doing with that

“saying”?)

• List all related language, select target language/behaviors for

lesson

• Check to see if earlier content be can recycled? Add new things？

Creating Contexts• Select props (no props just to have props, must have function,

provide information)

• Don’t provide too much information

• Pictures very clear (glass half empty)

• Most important prop = Teacher

• Context must have “multi-modal elements”; speech, behavior,

visual, aural (Focuses student attention! Generates interest!)

• Set up room, physical classroom

• Arrange sequence of events (time, difficulty, naturalness,

rhythm)

Embed Target Content • Select target language based on context rather than

traditional method of explaining grammar points

• Prioritize most commonly occurring contexts, most

important language to naturally participate in those

contexts

• Can I elicit the use of the target language?

Cycle of Automatization Repeated rehearsal performances = forced over

practice of fundamental structures and skills in context

Learners develop routinized mastery of performance skills

Move them from conscious to subconscious level

Attentional faculties freed up to deal with the new elements

Think of learning to play piano…you don’t have to think about your fingers after hours of practice

Automatization/Internalization Teacher helps learner to undo routine to achieve higher levels

of competence

Refocus learner attention on higher level aspects of each performance (if you don’t focus their attention on it who will?)

Bring new aspects of performance into conscious awareness

As students get words down, has them re-perform to correct tones, intonation, interpretation of meanings, facial expressions, movements and so on

Trajectory of deepening complexity

So same contexts need can be taught at differing levels of complexity with students at differing levels of sophistication

Forming new habits-takes time, uncomfortable at first

Successful Performance Generates

Intrinsic Motivation Performance in varied context also shows students their

growing mastery

What areas they have yet to master

Generates intrinsic motivation: “I did it!”

Discovery learning (Gee)-learning on one’s own, more

effective than hours of explanation

Teach Behavioral Culture

B. C. often not taught because “too difficult”/large amount of preparation; a text provides an easy to follow framework for lesson

Textual focus often at expense of language use; shift Attention away from textual learning at foundational level

Culture has patterns and structures that are recognizable (Walker, 2000)

Often only implicitly to its members; “that’s just how we do it”

We notice structure when it breaks down; “look at that weird foreigner”

We become aware of “rules” when someone does not follow them

Needs to be but is not a regular part of our pedagogical materials, learning activities, and teaching approach

Native/Experienced Non-native team teaching leads to “Smart Learning”

Helping American Learners Adapt to Chinese

Our students must reduce accommodation (Shepherd, 2005)

More work Chinese interlocutors have to do, higher

likelihood English becomes mode of communication

They accomplish this by syncing (culturally calibrating

behavior)

Our students must develop ability to think in Chinese

Establish Chinese intentions/intentions recognized by

Chinese

Can’t go through English/American culture filter

Can’t do this if we adapt Chinese to them

Do this first through mimetic learning, then through trial

and error

To get around base culture filter, help them imitate correct way

of doing (including saying) things

Mimetic learning; imitate behaviors (and language) that fits

Chinese ways of establishing intentions (ways of thinking)

and that are culturally appropriate (for Chinese culture not

American)

Target culture is standard, not American base culture

Fun and engaging for American learners (attention!)

Control the Learning Process Controlled activities first in order to get culturally

appropriate model down

Memorize and imitate acceptable behavior and language

by doing in context

Vary context and repeat until internalize it

Begin to think in Chinese in that context

Only then move to open ended (they create in context)

Otherwise, rely on base culture-think in English, use

Chinese words-culturally inappropriate CHINGLISH

Do Joint Attentional Work

Michael Tomasello-for new language skills to emerge

must share atttention on specific cognitive tasks-must be

done in Chinese in our case

Create situations-students must focus on what others are

saying and then engage in communication about or based

on what was said

Information gap; never know who will be called on; must

focus attention (uncertainty, nervousness can be used!)

Performance model facilitates: two students perform

dialogue or context; others watch; teacher asks

comprehension questions

Keeping Attention IN Chinese Student-centered learning-give group work project…turns to English

thinking and speaking, attention not IN Chinese

Joint attentional work

Pace

All Chinese

Information gap

Uncertainty-when will I be called

Performance

Comprehension questions

Real world contexts

Real communication in Chinese (reacting to what they say)

Don’t be afraid to speak Chinese! Examples:

Teacher speaks in Chinese…students ask questions

in English (mixed codes/cultural

environment…they’re thinking in English!!)

Teacher responds to unintelligible Chinese (to what

they mean instead of what they say)

Teacher says it in Chinese then follows it up with

English or says it really slowly

Use Natural Chinese Teaching Chinese is not like teaching French or Spanish

Chinese is tonal language, which presents special problems for

American learners

Must have aural component to learning-materials you choose

and assignments you give (Yu Li’s study on reading)

Impacts ability to distinguish and produce accurate tones

Eliminate choral repetition-isolate individual students to find

tonal issues

One of the hardest things for native speakers to do

(subconscious altering of rate of speech, word choice, etc.)

Don’t Alter Your Rate of Speech Changes in rate of speech affect phrase and sentence level tone

shifts in Chinese

Shepherd: study with native speakers at Iowa State-recorded

three rates of speech-words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs:

super slow teacher talk, normal, fast speech

Results: fast and normal speech tone pattern the same; slowed

speech significantly different tone patterns

If you slow your speech down to model for students, you are

modeling the incorrect tones

Research shows that native speakers cannot detect these tone

shifts while they are producing the tones themselves!

Students will adapt to you

Study On Tone Shifts with Changes in

Rate of Speech (ni hao)

Tone Shifts (Qingwen nin guixing)

Feedback with Tones Must provide immediate feedback

Students subconsciously imitate tones of those around them

Rehearsing incorrect tones

Internalization and fossilization

Feedback on tones must indicate that the problem is a tone,

which tone, and how to produce correct tone

This type of information should be in your materials

Class time limited, sustain Chinese language environment-

most effective technique: reverse build up

Feedback Loop Important reason American students do not move beyond

intermediate level…..lack of structured and informational

feedback

Informational Feedback (Shepherd, 2007)

Student knows what problem is AND how to fix it AND has

chance to do it again

对了！真棒！很好！不错！

Then student re-performs while teacher refocuses attention on

different aspect of performance

Separate Skills Separate skills/attentional and information overload

In Chinese: tones, culture, orthography, meaning,

pronunciation, grammar, behavior, etc.

If all presented at the same time, cognitive overload, none

of them learned to high levels, every lesson does not need

to include a writing focus for instance

Foundation in phonology first (speaking, listening and

interaction) then reading, then writing

Do a little of each but clear focus of each less on 1 skill set

Don’t Become Ms. Othmar Separating English explanation and rehearsal in target language

Declarative and procedural knowledge (we don’t care if

students can complete grammar worksheets or explain

grammar-declarative-as long as they can use the language

appropriately-procedural)

Extensive explanations (of grammar, etc.)

Explanation mode vs. T-S mode vs. S-S mode

Have them do it

Students will remember ten times longer and understand

much better if they learn on their own in context

Separate English Explanation and Chinese Use

Mixed linguistic codes confuse students, prevent them

from having the chance to develop listening

comprehension, and cause them to lose focus-just wait

for the English, it’s easier and safer

If do not separate, fostering Chinese meat and English

bones-thinking in English-very dangerous “deti”

Create two distinct locations, 2 days and three days,

etc.

Coach Your Students HOW to Learn Most students at the K-12 level (for most levels actually) do

not know how to study/learn efficiently

Will tell you exact opposite of what they actually need

Most important thing you can teach them is how to go about

learning Chinese (they can then do it on their own)

Element built into program to teach them how to learn Chinese

efficiently and effectively

Requires understanding things from learner perspective

Teaching how to learn Chinese vs. teaching Chinese

Coaching How to Learn Most language learners don’t know how to effectively and

efficiently learn a foreign language

Helping students LEARN HOW TO LEARN Chinese

SHOW them effective study habits What works for American learners

SHOW them efficient ways of learning

SHOW them why certain ways are better than others

SHOW them examples of successful learners

SHOW them with their own performance

If they see the results, they will do it themselves