Kung Fu Influence Young 1

Daryl Young

02/20/18

SLS 408

C. Bach

The Kung Fu Influence

The question I want to answer through this topic proposal is “How does the increase of

Chinese films influence people’s perceptions or motivations for studying Chinese?”. My primary

reason for choosing this topic comes from my own personal motivation to learn the Chinese

language Mandarin, and experiences with the Chinese community locally and abroad. Locally I

volunteered in the Students Helping in the Naturalization of Elders (S.H.I.N.E) program. Within

the SHINE program, I taught elderly Chinese immigrants the necessary English they needed to

help them to take a test and gain citizenship. Besides the SHINE program, I also tutored English

Language Learners (ELL’s) grades 3rd, 4th, 5th, and college majority of them were Chinese

speakers. The ELL’s I worked with spoke Cantonese, Taiwanese or other dialects of the Chinese

language, but the majority could understand and use Mandarin or English. Using my own

background knowledge of Mandarin combined with my native language of English I was able to

help the students through translanguaging. While abroad I studied Mandarin in Shanghai, China

and in China, I did some teaching that improved my own bilingualism. My experiences abroad

allowed me to see how China was growing and developing. Another thing that helped to

motivate my own urge to study Mandarin Chinese was Chinese cinema. I have always loved

watching Chinese martial arts movies with my grandfather since I was a little boy. Now as an

undergraduate in the field of Second Language Studies (SLS), and a speaker of a Chinese
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language I feel that I can find an appropriate answer to the questions: How does the increase of

Chinese films influence people’s perceptions/motivations for studying Chinese? How will this

benefit language learning classrooms? Are there any negative implications to film in language

learning classrooms?

As I have previously mentioned in the paragraph above, my own personal experiences

with the Chinese language and cinema has played a vital role in motivating me. In order for me

to answer my research question, I plan to use more than just my own personal experiences. I

intend to use other forms of empirical research, along with published articles, papers, and books

from the Hamilton Library located at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. The empirical portion

of my research paper will come from other Chinese language learners’ observations of the

Chinese films on the popular streaming websites such as Netflix, Hulu, Crunchyroll, or Amazon;

this will include educational movies as well as Chinese blockbusters. Through those

observations, I will either develop a survey to distribute to Chinese language learners (CLL’s) or

interview Chinese language learners about Chinese movies they might have watched on or off

those online media streaming sites. What I want from the empirical portion of my research is to

see whether or not Chinese cinema is actually a motivating factor for CLL’s.

The published articles, papers or books will be collected from online sources connected

through the Hamilton library database. Through this research portion, I hope to take a closer look

at how established institutions are using Chinese cinema to help motivate CLL’s, or to influence

their perceptions of the Chinese language. According to Kong (2011), there has been a course

created called “History of Chinese Cinema: From Silent to Sound.” Not only does this course

take a deeper look at the historic aesthetics of Chinese cinema, but it uses films as one of its

primary instructional methods. The value of this source comes from the fact that it provides
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multiple examples of how schools use films to facilitate language learning. I have also looked

into sources that give a look into changing students perceptions on the Chinese language through

film. Ning (2011) states that “film provides an opening to engage with Chinese culture, at the

same time that bits of information about the linguistic code is being conveyed” (p. 29). It is the

idea that culture, film, and linguistics can be interrelated presented by Ning and enforced by my

own personal experiences why I propose my research question. Ning is not the author who

believes in the power to motivate CLL’s through Chinese film culture. Lehua (2011) is also an

advocate of showing how culture and language are interrelated through the film, because as

Lehua (2011) states, “Films made for native speakers usually portray a social reality in which

people in the society live, behave, and connect with others” (p. 210).

Literature Review

Everyone has a reason as to why they want to learn another language. These reasons are

called motivations. Motivations differ for everyone, such as Korean heritage language learners

connecting to the language using pop media (Choi & Yi, 2012). Another example of students’

motivations comes from the movie “Speaking in Tongues”, in which cameras follow four

students recording their journeys and motivations for learning languages. Though the processes

of learning may differ, one thing is consistently evident and that is the motivation to learn.

Research by Lihua and Kong (2011) suggests that Chinese movies can increase the motivation

and ability to learn the Chinese language. It is through the film where motivation lacks

representation and that these two go hand in hand in society. Chua (2009) may argue, that

motivation to learn language comes from “Task Orientation” where students are more motivated

by completing objectives, but this research project fills in the gaps where a theory like this is

lacking.
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Student Motivations and Film

The amount of educational tools that teachers have access to is vast and one of the best

tools they have is film media (Kong, 2011; Lafreniere, 2010; Lu, 2012; Smilanich, 2010). By

using film in classrooms some teachers find that students who have a hard time dealing with

regular classroom readings become more involved in class. An article written by Smilanich and

Lafreniere (2010) notes how the film “offers an immediacy and accessibility that the printed text

frequently does not” (p. 604), helping the students become more motivated to participate in class.

Similarly, Chua (2009) wrote an article about children's motivations, except the main idea behind

Chua’s (2009) article is focused on a study of students motivation in regards to Chinese language

classroom learning environments, not their overall motivation. Although Chua’s (2009) study did

prove a correlation between the classroom learning environment and language learning

motivation, this research is new and is the first of its kind and can be improved. One-way Chua

(2009) mentioned that this research could be improved is through the combination of a task-

oriented learning, which involves students interacting with each other and completing certain

objectives while using the target language, and focusing on the overall meaning of it. Task-

oriented learning combined with New Media, such as film or Youtube videos should improve the

effectiveness of film in a language learning class (Chua, 2009).

Issues with Chinese Film

The use of new media has already been incorporated into Chinese Language learning

classes since the early 1990s (Bien & Kong, 2011). Although the original implementation of

Chinese film was used by the literature departments in order to teach and study how the film was

a reflection of Chinese society in relation to political impact and controversies that plagued the

country when those films were made (Kong, 2011). When it actually came to viewing and using
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Chinese films for teaching language certain issues had arisen, issues about what constitutes a

Chinese language film? The term “Chinese film” loosely refers to what Lu (2012) refers to as

“National cinema” (p.17), or cinema based off of movies from mainland China. The issue with

the idea of “National cinema” is it ignores “the rich variety of geopolitics, regionalism, ethnicity,

and polylocality in Chinese cinema”(p.20), which includes the many dialects of China, Taiwan

cinema, Hong Kong cinema, and other “Chinese diaspora” outside of China’s borders (Lu, 2012)

ignoring any linguistic or dialectal differences while producing movies, and simply using

mainland Chinese Mandarin. An earlier article written by Bien (2011) saw potential in using a

more simplified idea on Chinese cinema Lu (2012), stating that narrowing down Chinese

language cinema to just use the mainland China and national language Mandarin, makes the use

of Chinese language films easier for the classroom.

Other issues that came up in the research were regarding the use of film itself. Kong

(2011) mentions these issues as being both technical and preferential. The technical issues come

down to the availability because not all films are accessible at all times, nor is the technology.

Also, film viewing technology is unreliable it is prone to breaking, losing internet, or simply

being outdated. As for preference, it depends on how much preparation the teacher puts into

incorporating film into their curriculum. The issues presented here does bolster a small amount

of concern, but not enough to overshadow the positive aspects that Chinese cinema brings to

language classes.

Positive Aspects of Chinese Cinema in Classrooms

There are some very specific benefits that come with using Chinese cinema inside a

language learning classroom. Some of these benefits include bolstered student motivation and

ability to reach difficult students. Through the use of Chinese cinema, Chen (2011) taught
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students to use close analysis and peer reviews that helped motivate them to watch the films on

their own time and present their findings. Chen’s students really enjoyed working with Chinese

cinema and saw the potential of it towards language use and growth (2011), because the majority

of the research was done based on the student’s preferences, they were more motivated to get it

done. The culturally exotic visual images presented by Chinese cinema can be used to reach

students who have a hard time learning in standard classrooms. Smilanich and Lafreniere (2010)

describe a class of 10 students who after a week of film watching, and classroom instruction

“were able to construct thorough, organized, and often brilliant analyses of the director’s intent

in this sequence. . . and had written more than they had ever written in their academic lives” (p.

606), this is a benefit that should definitely be taken into consideration with the use of Chinese

cinema in class.

Other benefits include cultural connections and unique cinematic aesthetics. The cultural

perspective plays a big role when it comes to learning any language is especially emphasized in

Chinese cinema. Culture can be taught through film using two different techniques. The first

technique is extensively, and the other is intensive. Extensive learning through media focuses on

“big- C” cultural themes, while intensive looks at the “small-c” cultural aspects of the film.

According to Ning (2009) “film is an important and effective tool for students who are

attempting to navigate the uncharted universe of a “truly foreign” culture” (p. 35). It is through,

this navigation of Chinese film that students actually benefit. Chinese film’s visual effects

provide students with “engaging and powerful” (Kong, 2011, p.16) images that students really

enjoyed.

Using Chinese Cinema in Classrooms

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There are certain techniques that teachers have come up with in order to incorporate

Chinese films into their curriculum. As previously mentioned earlier in this paper, Chinese films

were originally used as a medium to observe and study Chinese culture. Recently, language

teachers such as Kong (2011), Chen (2011), and Bien (2011) have all found the use of Chinese

films to be a very effective medium for teaching, not just language but culture as well. Kong

(2011) uses Chinese film by having his students screen 34 films by three different directors.

After viewing a film, the students come up with discussion questions which are used once a

week to lead the class. Kong (2011) writes students become especially involved when they find

directors and filmmakers they like, which suggests that his students became self-motivated. Chen

and Bien (2011) both emphasized the importance of using films along with some variation of

film-related literature, in order to foster critical thinking amongst the students. These teachers

each agree that film inside the class is a great medium to foster critical thinking and language

development. Following their research and findings, this paper should fill any gaps in their

research, such as missing benefits or the usefulness of film outside of the classroom; through

surveys and interviews based off of the student’s perceptions. Answering the following

questions.

Research Questions

1) How does the increase in Chinese films influence people’s perceptions/motivations

for studying Chinese?

2) How will watching Chinese films benefit language learning classrooms? Are there any

negative implications to film in language learning classrooms?

Methods Section
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In order to get actual facts about whether or not Chinese Film affects student’s motivation

and perceptions towards learning the Chinese language, a survey was created and dispersed, and

some students were interviewed. This survey was given to Chinese language learners at the

University of Hawaii at Manoa. The language learners are of varying ages, sociocultural

backgrounds, levels, and proficiencies. Besides them all being Chinese language learners another

commonality is the fact they are studying under the same teacher.

Participants & Context

The location of UH Manoa was selected because this is the campus were many

international students from all over the world come to study many things. Chinese is one of those

things that students come here to study, because UH Manoa has Chinese classes from 101

Elementary Mandarin to Chinese 650 Cognitive Grammar. There are also various international

programs like the Chinese Flagship that is beneficial for international students, and language

learners alike. Programs like the Chinese Language Flagship whose motto is “Achieve

professional proficiency in Mandarin while pursuing a degree in any major,” which means that

the program primarily focuses on teaching and learning the Chinese language. Using what was

known about UH Manoa and its cultural and linguistic support of the Chinese language it was

decided that this was the best environment to implement a survey and do interviews.

Procedures

The survey that was used focused around three key and very important components. The

first component, of course, was the subjects or language learners. These subjects had to fit

certain requirements to make this research as valid as possible. First, they should be Chinese

language learners, secondly their level of proficiency needs to be at least beginner to

intermediate and lastly, the students should at least be enrolled at UH Manoa. By fulfilling all
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three of those requirements the survey will produce the most relevant and beneficial results. The

second component is the students access to any online movie, or video media streaming website,

such as Netflix, Hulu, Crunchyroll, or Amazon. Of course, any website or theater will work, but

the majority of films today are viewed online, contains the option for subtitles, and is so

accessible that they can be viewed from your phone. The third and final component, that was

needed for the survey to provide the best results is a good combination of open-ended and close-

ended questions. By using both open and closed-ended questions the collected data from the

closed-ended questions will provide much more statistical results and the open-ended questions

will lead to more interesting results especially towards the motivation of the students.

After finding the target audience and designing the survey it needed to be distributed. The

best way to get this survey out was to give the survey to a teacher who would be able to

distribute it to their class. The teacher that was able to share this survey with their class is a

Chinese 470 teacher. The teacher shared the survey with their students through email and the

results will be collected electronically. Based on the results collected there will be follow up

interviews, and that will help to complete the data collection portion of this research paper.

Limitations

The results of my research survey went exactly as expected, although there were varied

answers for the short answer questions this was also expected. Before, the results of my survey

are disclosed I want to first discuss the limitations of my survey. The limitations include the

participants, distribution, and biases. The participants in my survey are all students. The issue

with that is most students will not participate in a survey unless it fits their personal interests. As

a student, I am also guilty of falling into the category of not participating in student surveys. An

issue that I thought I had resolved by incorporating personal response short answer questions
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such as “What other Chinese films have you watched?” and “What other Chinese films do you

want to watch?”. So the turnout rate for the survey only produced eight participants two of which

are willing to sit down and chat for the interview portion but have not responded back to me for

an interview. Also, because they are all students nearing the end of the semester their time is split

between finals and other things. To deal with the time constraint I decided to make my survey

only 15 questions long with the majority (8 of 15) of the questions being multiple choice, but still

had a low turnout.

As for the distribution of my survey I wanted to get it out to as many people as possible,

so I went straight to the teachers and the Chinese Language Flagship Program coordinator. Of

the two teachers, I was able to contact one turned me down and the other posted the survey on

their laulima discussion board. The coordinator sent my request to someone higher up in the

Chinese language program and I did not hear back from them. Although I was able to distribute

my survey to my target audience, I was not able to receive as many results as I had hoped to get

which was between 20-30. I also feel that by distributing my survey to only language learners in

the upper division they already had built a pretty good level of proficiency, where they were

basically just using language movies as maintenance. This idea of maintaining the language

would already come with a biased attitude toward movies in that target language as being

beneficial.

Results

Regardless of the limitations, my survey was distributed, and the results from the

multiple-choice questions. Multiple choice question one revealed that all of the participants had

access to the most common movie streaming sites. According to questions eight and ten
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participants watched foreign language films with subtitles in that language or their L1 and

believes that those subtitles help them learn the language better. Surprisingly question 12 only

six of the eight participants indicated that they were shown movies in their Chinese language

classrooms, but results from questions two, three, and thirteen all participants admitted to

watching Chinese films on their own time and almost all of them agree that like the subtitles

Chinese films help with learning the language.

The short answer questions from the survey yielded the most interesting results. The first

two short answer questions four and five were “What Chinese films have you watched?” and

“What Chinese films do you want to watch?”. Amongst the movies that were named at least half

of them were either Cantonese or Taiwanese, not mainland Chinese. Following those were short

answer questions nine and eleven asking about why or why not they preferred using subtitles,

and whether or not subtitles helped them learn the language? They all preferred using subtitles

because the subtitles were like a crutch that helped them understand the movie better. Their

responses also pointed out that using subtitles helped them distinguish context, learn basic

conversational strategies, and understand the language better. The last short answer question “Do

you believe that watching movies in Chinese help you learn the language?” gave varied, but

positive results. All participants agreed that watching films does and did help them learn the

language, one participant admitted “I self-learned Mandarin for 15 years (since I was 4) by

watching Chinese dramas, films and reality shows” which really amazed me, and provided some

evidence towards the benefits of Chinese language learning in connection with Chinese films.

The questions from the survey revealed that Chinese films do motivate and influence

students to learn the language. From the first portion of the survey questions one through seven I

was able to determine that students were very motivated to watch Chinese movies by asking
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questions about their personal movie watching preferences. As for the second portion of the

survey questions, eight through fourteen students revealed how they perceived Chinese films to

be very useful when it comes to learning Chinese. The last question would have helped to get a

more in-depth look into both motivations and perceptions through an interview, but I was not

able to do any interviews. Nevertheless, the multiple choice and short answer questions revealed

enough information to conclude this paper and answer the research questions.

Conclusion

In conclusion, research has proven that Chinese film can and does motivate students to

learn the Chinese language. According to teachers such as Kong, 2011; Lafreniere, 2010; Lu,

2012; Smilanich, 2010 by using Chinese films in their classrooms they have only seen positive

benefits. These results include bolstered student motivation and ability to reach difficult students,

which according to research and my survey results is true. The results from the survey indicated

that students believe that Chinese films provide an authentic experience where they can view

how the language is used. The students who participated in the survey stated that they enjoy

Chinese film genres such as action, adventure, comedy, drama, historical dramas, and romantic

comedies, which according to Smilanich (2010) and Ning (2009) can be used as tool to facilitate

learning on a deeper level for all students as long as the students are interested and engaged. The

best ways to get students engaged is by using task-oriented learning along with a movie (Chua

2009) or combining Chinese films with film-related literature (Chen, 2011; Bien, 2011). For

students who self-study without access to task-oriented learning or film related literature, can

access any online streaming site such as Hulu, Netflix, or Amazon and watch Chinese films with

subtitles; which according to my survey results is a good way to learn in what context a character

can be used in. So, whether it is inside a classroom or self-study Chinese language films have
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been proven to help motivate students when it comes to learning the language and how they

perceive the language as well. I believe that as teaching techniques develop and become more

advanced so will the implication of film within the classroom context.

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References

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learning context.”2011.

Chen, L., (2011) Teaching Chinese film in an advanced language class. The ASIANetwork

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Choi, J., & Yi, Y. (2012). The use and role of pop culture in heritage language learning: A study

of advanced learners of Korean. Foreign Language Annals, 45(1), 110-129.

Chua, S. L. (2009). Associations between Chinese language classroom environments and

students’ motivation to learn the language. Australian Journal of Educational &

Developmental Psychology, 9, 53-64.

Jarmel, M. & Schneider K.(Producers) (Directors). (2009). Speaking in tongues [Documentary].

United States: Asian Crush & Digital Media Rights.

Kong, H. (2011). Reflections on teaching Chinese language films at American colleges.

ASIANetwork Exchange: A Journal for Asian Studies in the Liberal Arts. 18(2),13–29.

Lihua, Z. (2011). Teaching Chinese cultural perspectives through film. L2 Journal, 3(2), 201-

231.

Lu, S. H. (2012). Notes on four major paradigms in Chinese-language film studies. Journal of

Chinese Cinemas, 6(1), 15-25.

Ning, C. (2009). Engaging a “truly foreign” language and culture: China through Chinese film.

New Media in Higher Education, 42(1), 29-35.

Smilanich, B., & Lafreniere, N. (2010). Reel teaching real learning: Motivating reluctant

students through film studies. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 53(7), 604–606.