1. Integrating Behavioral Culture Instruction
into Teaching Chinese Language
Xizhen Qin (秦希贞), Ph. D.
Assistant professor
World Languages Education
University of South Florida
xizhenqin@usf.edu
3. Survey: Culture Courses
in the Chinese Program
• Does your school have Chinese culture course?
• How often is the Chinese culture course?
• What are the contents of your Chinese culture
course?
4. Questions to be discussed
• Why culture matters?
• What aspects of culture should be taught?
• How to teach culture in a Chinese language
program?
7. 2. Culture determines the meaning of
language
Discourse analysis:
“What do you want to drink?” “No, thanks.”
“where are you heading for?” “what are you
going to do?”
“Come to my house for a dinner when you have
time.”
8. 3.Language is not the only tool of
communication
• The most important purpose of learning
Chinese is to communicate.
• Non-verbal message transmit 65 percent of
meaning, in the form of kinesic behavior
(gestures), paralanguage (voice qualities,
laughing, yawning, etc.) and proxemics (spatial
factors) (Hammerly, 1982, p.181) .
9. What is culture?
Two Cs Model Hammerly’s
Model
Three Ps Model Two Ms Model
Little C Behavioral Culture
Cultural perspectives Cultural mind/themes
Cultural practices
Cultural
manifestations
Big C
Informational
culture
Cultural products
Achievement culture
(Yu，2008)
10. What kind of culture should be taught?
• 答复发生法发
发放
Informational
culture (such as
Chinese history)
Achievement culture
（such as Peking opera）
Behavioral Culture
（such as going to
a banquet )
The one that is
most closely
related to
communication.
11. What is behavioral culture?
• The sum of everyday life.
----Hector Hammerly, 1982, p.515
• The common daily practices and beliefs that
define an individual and dictate behavior in a
specific society.
----Christensen and Warnick, 2006, p.12
12. Examples of behavioral culture
• [Behavioral culture] includes such common things
as eating habits and manners, the manner of
greeting, the protocols of traveling by public
transportation, how to conduct a transaction at a
bank, how to order a meal in a restaurant, how
one treats siblings, parent-child relationships,
teacher-student relationships, how emotions are
displayed, and how gifts are exchanged.
---- Christensen and Warnick (2006, p.13）
13. Components of behavioral culture
Verbal behavior
• Do not treat language as a system of symbol.
• Do not educate students to be linguists.
• Use natural and authentic language.
Non-verbal behavior 非言语行为
• Gestures, facial expressions, spatial factor, etc.
Cultural perspective/minds
• Cultural values, customs, cultural habits, etc.
14. How does behavioral culture relate to
CFL?
• The goal of teaching Chinese is to teach
students to do things in Chinese.
• Different tasks at different stages.
15. • Speaking a foreign language is actually a skill.
16. How to teach behavioral culture?-0
A new pedagogic outlook:
• Teacher’s non-traditional roles
• Classroom activities
• Language environment
• Selection of instructional materials
18. How to teach behavioral culture？-1
• Teacher’s non-traditional roles ：
Movie director
Sports coach
Performer
Stage designer
Game referee
19. How to teach behavioral culture？ -2
• Classroom activities
Students’ performance is the major classroom
activity.
20. How to teach behavioral culture？ -3
• Language environment：
Language immersion from day 1 of learning
Chinese;
Learning Chinese in cultural contexts.
21. How to teach behavioral culture？ -4
• Selection of instructional materials
Multi-media materials, such as
1) CCC: Chinese: Communicating in the Culture.
By Galal Walker & Yong Lang, Ohio State
University.
2) CLIC: Chinese: Learning in the Culture. By Eric
Shepherd, Xizhen Qin, Qiong Wu, Peggy Liu.
University of South Florida
23. Teaching demo
• Target expressions: hi, teacher, please, thanks, you are
welcome
Setting：in front of a elevate
Roles：a teacher and a student
Scripts：
Student：how are you, Mr./Ms. **!
Teacher：Hi！
（the student pushes the button for the teacher and asks the
teacher to go first）：Please, Mr./Ms. **!
Teacher：Thanks
Student : You are welcome .
24. Students’ feedbacks
• I do like this teaching method, it’s a learn by
doing, and many times by listening to your
fellow classmates your better able to
understand the scenario of the dialogue.
• I believe that this is the best way to learn to
speak a language. Sitting in class and just
reading from a book is not conducive to
learning to communicate with native speakers.
25. • Forcing yourself to stand in front of a class and
recite a dialogue in a language you barely know is
not easy or comfortable, but the feeling makes
you study harder. If we did not have to be in front
of our peers performing on a daily basis, I do not
think we would work as hard.
• I really like it because performance is the best
way to learn any language.
• I think the method is excellent. I’ve taken other
language classes in high school and the
traditional teaching method for foreign languages
isn’t very helpful.
26. • I think that the performance-based style is
great for our listening comprehension (which
is very important), it forces us to be immersed
into the language, and overall it increases the
rate at which we retained the information
through repetitions (which eventually leads to
fluentness).
27. Conclusion
The teaching of behavioral culture is not only
feasible, but also more effective. When
speaking the target language, students’
behaviors are culturally more appropriate and
better accord with the rules and norms of the
target culture, which smoothes the path
towards more successful intercultural
communication.
