China through Documentary Films and Cross-Cultural Peer Learning: Experiments in Advanced CFL Course Design and Instruction

Gang Liu刘刚

 Carnegie Mellon University   Associate Teaching Professor

论文摘要Paper AbstractStudents who study Chinese language and culture often aspire to discover a “real China.” While the existence of this so-called “reality” and its ultimate discovery are questionable, there are some art forms, in which China is presented or represented in a less embellished, dramatized, stereotyped, albeit no less complex and intriguing way.

This presentation showcases a content-based documentary film/language course that I designed and taught in 2015. The course adopted a hybrid teaching method by pairing Chinese language learners with native Chinese speakers and asking them to collaborate on various projects, including website design and documentary film making.

 The purpose of these collaborations was to encourage cross cultural/lingual exchanges between Chinese learners and native Chinese speakers, with the aim to enrich and deepen both parties’ knowledge and understanding of modern Chinese society and culture from a global perspective. By way of analyzing the course’s curriculum design, lesson plans, and students’ course projects, this presentation reveals and discusses some of the special learning outcomes that have made possible by using these pedagogical methods/approaches. It also addresses some of the key issues in advanced Chinese language/content instruction, such as the role played by content-based instruction in CFL teaching and learning.

 发言人简介Presenter's BioDr. Gang Liu is an Associate Teaching Professor of Chinese Studies at Carnegie Mellon University. He developed and taught Chinese language and culture courses at all levels, including Elementary and Advanced Chinese, Business Language and Culture in China, Traditional Chinese Thoughts and Literature through Comic Books and Animation, Into the World of the Anomalies: Chinese Ghost Literature and Culture, and Visions of China: Modern Chinese Society and Culture through Documentary Films and New Media. His research interests include classical Chinese poetry and literati miscellanies, Chinese language, literature and culture, CFL (Chinese as a Foreign Language) pedagogy, and technology enhanced learning. He is the author/co-author of several articles including “The ‘Loss’ of Purity: Changes and Persistence in the Cultural Memory of the Cold Spring Pavilion,” “Integrating Cultural Content in Language Teaching: Storytelling and Content-based Instruction in Advanced Chinese Classes,” “A Concept-Based Instructional Design: Introducing Chinese Color Terms and Their Metaphorical Meanings at the Elementary Level,” “Integrating Language and Culture: Content-based Instruction through Digital Storytelling for Advanced Chinese Learners.