Hero photograph
 
Photo by pixabay.com

Course: Intercultural Mandarin Chinese (NCEA L1 - Chinese)

Wei Mao —

This Mandarin Chinese course utilizes an innovative teaching approach called intercultural language teaching to develop Chinese language learning in the intercultural dimension.

When:

Term One

Subject Area(s)

Mandarin Chinese

NCEA L1

With globalization the world is transforming into an international community. In this context New Zealanders increasingly need to communicate with people from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds. This challenge requires language learners to have a sense of awareness of other cultures, as well as of their own, in order to communicate effectively and appropriately.

This course integrates culture at all levels of learning. It not only develops learners’ basic language acquisition, but also to learn cultural concepts that are conveyed through languages, helping learners to gain a better understanding of languages and cultures and how they are interconnected.

The goal of the course is to help learners to develop their intercultural awareness and competence along with developing their language skills to interact with people across cultural boundaries, and also help them to be positive and open toward their own and others. This will involve learner-center approach to engage learners in exploring their understanding and awareness of their own language(s) and culture(s) in relation to the target language culture (Mandarin). Then applying that knowledge in language use for communicative purposes across cultural boundaries.

Note: This approach is recommended by New Zealand Ministry of Education curriculum (2007) emphasis on a new area of learning language, in which language, culture and communication are three key components and support one another at the center of the language learning process.

Requirements

Intercultural learning cannot be done individually without acknowledging ‘otherness’. As such language learning cannot be understood without considering the situational context of the interactive learning process. In the course the participating students become a community with a shared knowledge and understanding in exploring and discussing culture-in-language in communication within and/or across cultural context(s). Anyone wanting to take this course will need to fully participate in ongoing online discussion while completing a variety of language culture learning tasks, whether through social media type platforms or during the weekly video conference.

Assessment

Intercultural communicative competence is viewed as one important assessment to examine learners' intercultural perspective learning. Four components are assessed, including knowledge, skills, attitudes and intercultural awareness in general. However, as intercultural learning is viewed as a dynamic on-going process rather than static learning, this competence can not be assessed in a standardised test system which only focuses on factual product. Therefore, some alternative assessments are employed for measuring learning including portfolios, ethnographic projects, learning logs, self-reports, survey summaries of accomplishments throughout the course and these are designed to suit the different language proficiency levels.

However, this is a multi-level course in which all students learn together as a learning community. So another focus is on linguistic competence as learning outcomes, students can be assessed at NCEA L1, depending on what best meets their individual needs.

Four internal assessments are available for this course after completing first and second year of the course (beginner and intermediate level) according to NCEA L1 standards.
• 90869 Give a spoken presentation in Chinese that communicates a personal response (Internal) (4 Credits)
• 90872 Write a variety of text types in Chinese on areas of most immediate relevance (Internal) (5 Credits)
• 90868 Demonstrate understanding of a variety of spoken Chinese texts on areas of most immediate relevance (External) (5 Credits)
• 90871 Demonstrate understanding of a variety of Chinese texts on areas of most immediate relevance (External) (5 Credits)

About the Teacher

Wei Mao has been teaching second language (both Chinese and English) for more than fifteen years. She taught English as a foreign language at a high school in China before moving to New Zealand. In New Zealand she has taught Chinese at different language proficiency levels and learners from a wide variety of educational contexts including primary, secondary and tertiary institutions. For the last two years she has also been teaching online Chinese for NetNZ. As a second language teaching major, she completed her BA in English education at a teacher training university in China, next a Graduate diploma in second language teaching at the University of Otago and then an MA in Applied Linguistics (second language teaching) at Victory University of Wellington. Currently she is also completing her Phd research project on intercultural language education in New Zealand. She is very excited to offer the online intercultural course for secondary learners in New Zealand. Ms Mao’s hobbies include salsa dancing, hiking, cooking with her family and friends in her spare time. 

Enrol now:

http://www.netnz.org/enrolment/