From Duality to Unity: Integrating Language and Culture in Chinese Classrooms

 

Chen Zu-yan (陈祖言)

Binghamton University

 

Although Chinese language teaching has admittedly always contained a cultural dimension, and Chinese language teachers make admirable efforts to stimulate student interest in Chinese culture, language and culture often blend in relatively divergent ways. If some exciting cultural activities are not supported by a curriculum with an excellent cultural pedagogy, they may create the impression that culture in language learning is merely a bonus or hors d’oeuvre, an expendable fifth skill tacked on to the teaching of speaking, listening, reading and writing. How can we move from incorporating cultural activities to integrating cultural knowledge with language curriculum? Can we provide students with a curriculum focusing on both linguistic and cultural competencies? To these operative questions, this paper attempts to provide answers by presenting a new approach to cultural integration and immersion. It will demonstrate how Chinese culture manifests itself or is couched in linguistic forms. Culture thus becomes the very core of language learning in this approach, transitioning its role from context to text, and its relation with language from duality to unity.