Asia Literacy – redefining the middle ground between language and culture education (part 2)

Nonetheless, without a deep understanding of both the language and culture, the teacher may risk reinforcing cultural stereotypes, and deliver a program incompatible to the natural sequence of second language acquisition.

4. Teaching culture through language

The last approach in this framework, teaching culture through language, relies on the assumption that language is the major vehicle through which a culture is manifested.

Let us take the example of dates in Chinese. The fact that dates are sequenced as year – month – day reflects a preference of Chinese people for viewing this world as having a macro-to-micro structure. In fact, this cultural perspective resonates well with any beginner learner of Chinese when they are introduced to rules such as the family name – first name sequence in names, and country – province – city – road – number – floor sequence in addresses.

Rather than hoping to engage students simply with the idea of 'doing something differently', I argue that Asia Literacy is only meaningful when we dig deeper and ask why things are different. Perhaps this is the perfect time for asking the students "Why do you think the Chinese would use a macro-to-micro system? What are the advantages and disadvantages?" or even talking about collectivism and its implication on the way the society is organised.

Personally, I believe that this approach to teaching Asia Literacy via the cultural perspectives embedded within the languages means that students can leave school not only with a toolbox of facts about Asia, but real tools for identifying potential sources of miscommunication and promoting greater social coherence. It is thus with great excitement that I read the "Draft Shape of the Australian Curriculum: Languages" which sees language as a social practice and the classroom as a hotbed for 'talk about talk'.

Let me end this discussion with a quote from a rather disengaged Year 8 student of mine whose attendance and performance in Chinese last year was minimal. Nonetheless, I thank her for her observation below, as I hope that this quote could remind all Asian language teachers that among the frantic pursuit for language proficiency, we should never forget to reflect on the ultimate purpose of what we do:

"Mr Wang! The people who live next to me speak Chinese, and whenever they speak English, they can never get 'he' or 'she' right. I had always thought they were stupid or something, but now I see why they keep making that mistake when speaking English. It's cuz you just say 'ta' in Chinese for both 'he' and 'she' right? So, like, you never have to think about it. I finally understand it now."