Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Introduction
UC Davis also rises drastically. However, as for what I observed over three
Davis, especially on the common goal of the discourse community and the
specific genres to realize the common goal, a special range of lexis, and a
taught in classes provided by the major. Its also clear that this
by Asian cultures from their parents, and Non-Asian students who usually
community and detailed analysis into the three groups within the
II. Methods
1. Survey
1. Please select the group you belong to. (Asian International students,
handwriting.
4. Describe your confidence level in Chinese reading.
5. Describe your confidence level in Chinese speaking.
respectively.
2. Interview
To get more information about the common goal, and to analyze the effect
standing (level of expertise), three interviews with one student from each
Result
Number of Students
11
21
14
5
8
10
4 10
learning
1.5
0.5
0
Chinese Reading Chinese Writing Chinese Speaking
III. Analysis
Common Goal
Due to the time limit in survey (10 minutes roughly), answers regarding
the goal of studying Chinese are very board and diverse. Hence, I
selected from the three groups, and it appears that even though there is a
defined. Synthesized from the survey result, most student agree that they
want to learn more about Chinese culture and to spread Chinese culture
that they want to find a job utilizing their Chinese skills, such as
When I summarized the common goals from the survey responses, and
sorted the answers based on groups, I found that even though each group
has all the goals that I defined as a set of common goals for the discourse
community, the most popular goals within each group are different.
Overall, among Asian International students, the most popular goals are
to learn more about Chinese from a western viewpoint, and to spread the
influence of Chinese culture. The prevalent goal among Non-Asian
students, both learning more about Chinese and language base for career
in Chinese and Food Science, said that she wanted to major in Chinese for
the English based Chinese education system distinct from the Chinese
based Chinese education system that she used to study in during her two
years of living and studying in Beijing, the capital city of China, and the
used in China and Chinese speaking areas, she talked about the two years
she spent in Beijing with her father who worked in the Japanese Embassy.
study Chinese literature. She said during the interview, But when I study
division Chinese classes I have taken were not even taught in Chinese,
and that was a new experience for me because I was told that you have to
recalled that at the beginning of the class about modern Chinese novels,
her professor claimed that language should not be the barrier of studying
China believe that the best way to study literature is to put yourself on
the position of the characters/figures in the work and write about your
and Asian teaching system, Yukimura said, and different learning styles
could inspire you with different perspectives to look into Chinese culture.
Chinese here. In other words, for students with solid base of Chinese
that at the beginning, it was hard for them to switch from the Chinese
based classes to the English based classes, especially when the class is
about traditional Chinese but its taught in English. They mentioned that
norm, including grammar order, word choice and writing logics, and it
professors here constantly encourage them to jump out of the box, and
think of new answers other than the orthodox opinions they studied in
China, she answered: China is a country of great potential, and its really
attractive for me to find out how a country with a very different regime
good way to participate in social life in China. China, unlike most modern
democratic regimes, is ruled by only one political party, yet its not an
Despite her enthusiasm in Chinese society and economy, she said that
she has only been to Hong Kong once, and like most of the Non-Asian
students in Chinese major, she only received one year of basic Chinese
only recognize about 200 Chinese characters before I studied here, but
now I could read some simple Chinese academic articles without referring
to build a language base for her career goal rather than putting emphasis
on Chinese culture. She explained that with the current knowledge she
learned in UC Davis, its hard for her to have a general, objective view of
who havent experienced Chinese culture in person, I feel like its arbitrary
class and online. She added, Because for every society, there are
aspects that you could learn while you are actively participating in the
daily life.
years. Similarly, its immature to jump into conclusion of how China is like
one has to be there and participate. Hence, its reasonable that Non-Asian
students. Recorded response show that both learning more about the
culture they inherited from their families and prospective jobs using
wanted to learn more about the culture his parents were raised in
because since he was young, his parents told him Chinese myths and read
interpret for other people between their heritage and the English
languages. (Wu et al, 2010) Nina Wu and Su Yeong claimed that the
due to personalities.
English. My family lived near the China Town in San Francisco before I
transferred to high school in Cuppertino. Jacqueline recalled. My parents
and grandparents cant speak English at all, so they had to live around
being a language broker, Nina Wu and Su Yeong stated in their paper that
brokers for their mothers and fathers, and that these relations are
the perceptions that they mattered to their parents even when controlling
for prior levels of the exogenous and mediating variables. (Wu et al,
2010) For many Asian-American students like Jacqueline who were raised
authority to their family roles, which could give them positive view on
The more background knowledge one has, the more possible that the
experience could affect his career goal. All the findings above show that
Chinese majors are also very diverse in terms of goals and motivations,
are just interested in Chinese culture but not for pursuing career or
research purposes.
Expert Members:
Chinese skills. Summarized from the data collected from survey, overall,
Non-Asian has the lowest average confidence level in all three dimensions
students all show high confidence level in reading and speaking, while
with Chinese characters writing, and test one their general Chinese skills
before and after the training. Result shows that there is significant
learning. (Guan et al, 2015) That is to say, students will benefit from
meaning while reading. Hence, we could say that when prior knowledges
in Chinese speaking and Chinese reading are roughly the same, the group
with higher level in Chinese writing will have higher overall level of
when they meet questions during their process of Chinese learning, and
IV. Conclusion
After the survey and three interviews, I realize that Chinese major
major, and work together to study one of the most ancient languages
exchange their Chinese learning experiences and learn from each other.
V. Reference:
Swales, J. (2011). The Concept of Discourse Community. In Writing about Writing(pp. 471-473).
Boston, MA: Downs and Wardle.
Guan, C. Q., Perfetti, C. A., & Meng, W. (2015). Writing quality predicts Chinese learning.
Reading and Writing, 28(6), 763-795. doi:10.1007/s11145-015-9549-0
Wu, N. H., & Kim, S. Y. (2008). Chinese American Adolescents Perceptions of the
Language Brokering Experience as a Sense of Burden and Sense of Efficacy. Journal of
Youth and Adolescence,38(5), 703-718. doi:10.1007/s10964-008-9379-3