1. Summer Study in China
Programs: Two Different Roadmaps
for Success
Dr. Dali Tan
Landon School
Dr. Elisa Liang
China Institute

2. Because Study Abroad Programs work
with students under ideal “conditions
of learning”, they provide perfect
opportunities for participants to gain
what Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe
call “six facets of understanding.”
(Explanation, interpretation,
application, perspective, empathy and
self-knowledge).

3. I hope that my study of the homestay
immersion experience of Landon-in-China
that took place over several years will
contribute to “our understanding of what is
learned, by whom and under what
conditions” in study abroad contexts
(DuFon and Eton, p. 27) so that we can
design more effective study abroad
programs that will help equip American
students with 21st century skills and
competence.

4. According to B. Cambourne in
Whole Story, there are eight
major conditions of learning:
Immersion, Demonstration, Eng
agement, Expectation, Responsi
bility, Use, Approximation and
Response.

5. Immersion—Study Abroad students
are surrounded both visually and
aurally by what we want our
students to learn.
Demonstration—Study abroad
participants see and hear authentic
use of language and practice of
culture constantly.

6. Engagement—Learners will engage in learning if
they see themselves as potential doers of the
learning and understand how it will further their
lives. Study aboard participants live abroad and
are required to use Chinese in real life
communicative situations.
Expectation—Study abroad directors should set
high expectations for the participants in their
improvement in both language proficiency and
cultural competence.

7. Responsibility—Study abroad
participants have the choice about
what they want to focus their attention
in their sojourn in China.
Use—Study abroad participants
practice/use their linguistic skills and
cultural knowledge to gain deeper
cultural understanding and intercultural
competence.

8. Approximation—Teachers do not put emphasis
on correctness and error avoidance. Study
abroad participants are encouraged to form their
own hypothesis, test it out and get feedback in
real life communicative situations.
Response—Study abroad students make attempt
to use language and their teachers, host families,
people in the community respond with
enthusiasm and celebration of their efforts.

9. Through homestay programs students
gain intercultural competence as they
engage in “negotiation of difference”
(Kinginger) and start to value the
perspectives of others. Home stay in
study abroad programs is potentially
more meaningful as a learning
experience in high school than in
college because it keeps students
more connected to local realities.

10. Unlike adult students who consider themselves
independent and choose their own activities
and perhaps their own interpretations more
than younger students do, high school students
are better equipped to blend into their host
families, both because of their own approach to
learning and because the families are more likely
to really act in loco parentis, thus keeping a
closer watch over them and attending more
carefully to their needs than they would with
'adult' students.

11. In her paper “American students abroad:
Negotiation of difference?” Kinginger
(2008b) calls for “studies linking language
learning to the negotiation of difference and
the development of global awareness,
intercultural competence, and civic
responsibility.” Even though there are
obvious linguistic gains in a short 4-week
homestay individual placement immersion
program for high school students, their most
lasting and valuable gains lies in increased
intercultural competence.

12. What is intercultural competence?
“Briefly, intercultural competence
involves five elements:
Attitudes; Knowledge; Skills of
interpreting and relating; Skills of
discovery and interaction and
Critical cultural awareness/political
education (Byram, 2000).

13. Attitudes: curiosity and openness, readiness to
suspend disbelief about other cultures and
belief about one's own.
Knowledge: of social groups and their products
and practices in one's own and in one's
interlocutor's country, and of the general
processes of societal and individual interaction.
Skills of interpreting and relating: ability to
interpret a document or event from another
culture, to explain it and relate it to documents
from one's own.

14. Skills of discovery and interaction: ability to
acquire new knowledge of a culture and cultural
practices and the ability to operate
knowledge, attitudes and skills under the
constraints of real-time communication and
interaction.
Critical cultural awareness/political education:
an ability to evaluate critically and on the basis
of explicit criteria perspectives, practices and
products in one's own and other cultures and
countries.

15. Using Byram as my primary theorist on
intercultural competence and testimonies
by male and female high school students
from different ethnic backgrounds and
different religious groups, I find that the
successful and rewarding experiences of
high schoolers in my study make a sharp
contrast to those documented in the
literature in which authors find that
homestay situations for college students
were not very helpful.

16. Their testimonies speak volumes on the
impact of homestay experience on high
school students’ enhanced attitudes
toward Chinese speakers and Chinese
cultures, friendships with Chinese
speakers, enhanced intercultural
competence in “negotiation of
difference” (ability to appreciate
different points of views of the Chinese)
and emerging critical cultural awareness.

17. “Attitudes: curiosity and
openness, readiness to suspend
disbelief about other cultures and
belief about one's own.”
Even middle and high school
international travel programs help
motivate younger students in
learning a foreign language.

18. “Skills of discovery and interaction: ability to acquire
new knowledge of a culture and cultural practices and
the ability to operate knowledge, attitudes and skills
under the constraints of real-time communication and
interaction.”
Another crucial factor in intercultural competence lies in
“skills of discovery and interaction.” High school
participants in a homestay situation learned the skills of
living in another culture as well as the pragmatics of
interpersonal communication in informal settings.

19. “Critical cultural awareness/political education:
an ability to evaluate critically and on the basis of
explicit criteria perspectives, practices and
products in one's own and other cultures and
countries.”
The cross-cultural social network the
homestay immersion experiences provide for our
participants serve to promote “critical cultural
awareness” that enables them to understand
Chinese culture from different points of views.
Our participants became citizen ambassadors for
America and its values as well as better citizens of
the world.

20. The Importance of doing home stay immersion in high
schools
In contrast to college-level study abroad programs in
which participants are often independent in many
activities, in the Landon-in-China Program all parties
assume a role of in loco parentis for students. The
program director, the Chinese host parents as well as the
host siblings jointly serve as participants’ guides and
almost as parents. As a rule, LIC participants are never
allowed to be alone — they have to be with their host
parent and/or host sibling or with LIC program staff.

21. In her “American students abroad: Negotiation of
difference?” Kinginger (2008b) points out that
American post-secondary study abroad groups are
often short-term transfer of cohesive groups to foreign
settings and, while abroad, American students tend to
rely upon each other or their programs for social and
psychological support. This tendency to stay in the
native speaker group prevented, albeit
unintentionally, participants from taking full advantage
of the opportunities of being fully engaged with the
local communities and developing deeper
relationships with native speakers.

22. In sharp contrast, the LIC Program in general
discourages its American participants from
gathering together after school. Except for four
hours of language classes in the morning, the
program invites all Chinese host brothers and
sisters to join the afternoon cultural classes and
excursions as well as weekend trips to
surrounding cultural, historical and scenic sites.
The program also works very hard at matching
the interests and hobbies of participants with
those of Chinese host siblings, whenever
possible.

23. The application packet includes an
extensive American student profile and
those profiles are sent to the two
exchange schools in Beijing and
Chengdu so they can try to find ideal
host families for participants. In January
and February, the exchange schools
send their students to Landon School for
three weeks to live in our students’
homes.

24. In some cases, Landon students who
hosted Chinese exchange students will
have a home stay with those same Chinese
students. So, when many of the LIC
students arrive in China, some of them
already know or have previously met their
Chinese host siblings. This kind of exchange
helps to facilitate participants’ interaction
with Chinese siblings.

25. In comparison with adult learners, it is much
easier for high school students to blend in to their
host families (in a much sheltered way) and
become a member of a Chinese family with the
help of a host brother or sister of the same
age. Culturally, because many Chinese people still
believe that Chinese is SO difficult to learn and
they appreciate so much an outsider's attempt at
learning about their language and culture, they
often bombard my students with praise and words
and acts of encouragement.

26. My students received lavish praise from host families
for their sometimes marginal performance in
Chinese. This tendency also helped those students to
have more satisfying and rewarding homestay
experiences. Participants who had study-abroad
homestay immersion experiences in high school
definitely had more of an advantage than their peers in
college programs who had never had such an
experience. Participants’ testimonies in this study also
illustrate that homestay immersion at a high school
level is the best way to help students acquire
quot;intercultural competencequot; as defined by Byram --
intercultural attitudes, knowledge, skills and critical
cultural awareness.

27. Because of financial and personal reasons, most
American students – including many who study
the Chinese language – may not have the
opportunity to visit China. Therefore, it is
imperative that educational institutions in the
U.S. make it a top priority to bring native Chinese
speakers and different aspects of Chinese
cultures and traditions to American students.
Academic and cultural exchange programs can
help promote as well as enhance Chinese
language teaching and learning.

28. Quite apart from study-abroad programs, schools may
bring language and culture learning opportunities to
their home campuses. An example of this is the
American/Chinese Academic Exchange component of
Landon School‘s Chinese program. Landon School has
three sister schools in China: Beijing Xicheng Foreign
Language School, the high school affiliated with Fudan
University, and Chengdu Foreign Language School.
Students at Landon School have opportunities to host
Chinese students from these schools in their homes,
meet and work with Chinese exchange teachers, and
attend school with them on a daily basis for three
weeks every year.

29. It is through this kind of person-to-person contact that
students get to know
Chinese culture and Chinese people first hand. Many
host brothers and sisters
have kept in touch with each other to this day .The
deep friendship that was forged during one home stay
has created a lasting monument to peace. Since only a
small fraction of students are in a position to host
Chinese students in their homes, it behooves
educators to develop other means to provide students
with opportunities for contact with Chinese people
and culture.

30. Landon School has included the following activities as
part of its Chinese/American exchange program: annual
Chinese New Year assembly, alumni guest speakers who
use their Chinese language skills in their Chinese-related
professions, and Chinese Club activities (such as field
trips to Chinatown, Chinese Community Centers, Freer
and Sackler Asian Collections at the Smithsonian
Museums and East Asian Collection at the Library of
Congress; martial art demonstrations and classes; dinner
at Chinese restaurants with parents and students;
concerts and performances given by Chinese artists and
musicians; cooking classes and calligraphy classes; etc.)

31. I personally have also encouraged students to tutor new
Chinese immigrant children at the Chinese community
center in Washington D.C. as a part of their community
service project or to provide translation services and
other services to the residents in Washington D.C.'s
Chinatown. Chinese class projects include conducting
interviews of musicians from China and publishing their
information in a local Chinese language newspaper.
Landon School also hosts the China Roundtable of
Washington, a series of Sunday luncheon seminars that
attract Chinese students, American students, and
specialists living in the greater D.C. metropolitan area.

32. A wide range of issues is discussed and debated in
these student-led seminars, including
environmental protection, student visas,
educational systems, the US-China trade deficit,
intellectual property, US-China relations, the
development of western China, Beijing Olympic
Games, Chinese Contemporary Art and much
more. The Roundtable usually invites both
American and Chinese experts and scholars to be
guest speakers.

33. In our program design, we need to help
high school students engage more in the
local realities through individual placement
home stay and equip them with training
and strategies so that they gain linguistic
proficiency and intercultural competence
through “observation, participation and
introspective reflection.” (Celeste
Kinginger, Discover Language Abroad: A
Guide to Language during Study Abroad for
Teacher.)