What is believed, what is required: Mandarin language

weekend school

Elaine YeeQualitative Methods, EAS 596C

Dr. Wenhao Diao2 May 2014

The Problems• Use of L1 teaching materials with/on? L2 learners.• Authentic Identities• High reliance on written over oral forms of literacy.• Speech acts acknowledging small age, but active use of

high-cognitive level teaching methods.• Disconnected teaching methods between K-American

students learning Chinese (White Americans) and Chinese American (Huangzongren) 1st graders learning Mandarin.• Culture collapsed into race, further collapsed into language.

(or, linguistic hegemon) [see Hou, 2014]

Participants

• Peng Laoshi, F (m. to a Chinese American)• Smith Laoshi, F (m. to an American)• Chang Laoshi, M (principal)• Mothers who accosted me– Mother of April

Theoretical Apparatus

• Kramsch: The Multilingual Subject, “The experience of the foreign always implies reconsideration of the familiar.” (Intro, 5)

• Scarino: “pure, normal, orderly” is the basis of multilingualism’s purchase on Western pedagogy

• Freire: The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, US-based faculty distaste for teacher based in part on commonsense notion that students are to become independent/thinkers, and not be data “vessels.”

Methods

• Artifacts– Photos

• Semi-Structured Interviews• Analysis memos• Online presence• Emails– Principal– Two teachers

• Questionnaires• Dining out (informal chat)

Heritage School Display

Walls

HW + Study Aids

• Upload photos

Findings

• Use of both L1 curricula and methods– Students still learn to write

• Students do not know meanings of oral expressions– Tho they can say appropriate things, prompted

• Teaching Beliefs v Classroom Needs– Classrooms straight out of China

Validity Threats,in particular, with regard to teacher incentives to adhere

to pedagogically ineffective beliefs

• Teacher may have wanted to seem more independent, thus exaggerating her status as primary breadwinner. (I feel so independent!)

• Teacher may have wanted to seem in herself as authentic, not a sell-out to American enemy hegemony?

• Teacher may have wanted to accentuate her market value as “native speaker” and thus, status as a “bearer of culture.”

Implications US-Based Pedagogy Concerns?

• “Authenticity” needs to be debated, then clearly delineated for teacher training…• Teachers need training in normative behaviors in

the classroom: ex, teacher requires students to bow

• Nativism needs to be openly discussed. For example, how are students benefiting? by behaving as if they were an L1 learner, as opposed to learning in an immersion environment… (see example above)

Further Directions

1. only one book on bilingual couples and their marriage patterns influencing work decisions (Ingrid Piller, Bilingual Couples Talk)

2. Use of L1 teaching materials on L2 learners is bad? (Validity threat: Mexican American Studies in TUSD)

3. Native Speakers as teachers. (Piller) Experience of Chinese people as Mandarin teachers of English-speaking students.