Language and Culture Reflections on a teaching experience in Shanghai, November December 2005 Philip Wilson, Teacher of Chinese

I rose at 6.15 and turned on the air conditioner in my little flat at the top of the Red Building in Weiyu School, Shanghai. I had a coffee and then a shower. I checked my email in the study and caught up with what was happening back at school in Australia and also had a look at the electronic newspapers. The connection speed was fast. The computer access has been invaluable and the Microsoft XP operates just like it does at home so something positive can be said about globalisation! At 8 a.m. I descended the stairs to the administration area and went to work.

Leaving the building, I walked across to the Donglou, East building, to climb the four flights stairs to the media room, my head full of what I would be presenting to the students about school and life in Australia: How would I use this to encourage their English skills and what would they want to know? What did they expect to find out from the visiting teacher from Australia? ..But first of all I had to engage Mr. Sun the IT technician to help me load a file from my USB onto windows 98 to play a film showing my school. As sometimes happens at home, there are different versions of windows and other software in different parts of the school so files dont always load as one expects. Not having any luck, we dashed down stairs and co-opted Mr. Yang, one of the IT teachers, into the operation He converted the mvw file format to an avi file format that would play on Windows 98 through Real Player. All this in Chinese Mandarin and Shanghai dialect; my brain was bursting. I also had Mr. Sun show me how to work the projector and move from the film about my school to a DVD depicting Australias natural environments. Even though I speak Chinese, the whole process was aided by the universality of the language of technology which filled in the gaps in my Chinese and allowed the staff to preempt my efforts. In 25 minutes we had the whole show up and running, smiles all round.

And then the students arrived, en masse. I asked them to sit where they pleased and this resulted in much excitement as they generally sit in assigned places. Every week their pastoral care teacher reorganizes the seating arrangements so that students work next to a different partner. The pastoral care teacher is very central to their educational experience as they organize class meetings and mobilize the students a s a team too be involved in a variety of events. As exam time draws closer, the pastoral teacher often organizes peer-tutoring sessions after normal hours. In Australia we often assume that Chinese school is strictly regimented and somehow geared only towards academic achievement. This is a stereotype. Group work, concern for the individual, creativity, imagination and a sense of excitement are all present in a Chinese school but not necessarily or particularly in subject lessons. School can be vibrant for young Chinese and in a crowded, one-child policy environment; it is a place where strong bonds are formed between students and also with their teachers. Relationships are a fundamental factor in education, which is recognized in China as much as elsewhere: but one has to be able to perceive it and our own cultural expectations can be a blind spot.

I had already taught them about South Australia and Adelaide in the previous week and had used brochures and other visual material with groups of four to stimulate a brainstorm and joint text construction (oral) about visiting Australia. I felt that having shown them the broader picture it would be good to stimulate their curiosity. So, I introduced the film and the school and asked them to tell me why our symbol is a mature tree. I had to ask many leading questions to draw out the idea that the tree represents growth for the students as individuals and a growth in learning. For example, This is a tree- what do we know what trees do?, How are a tree and a student be the same? One student told us that a tree is peace. We agreed that this was a good idea. It was hard for them to formulate their ideas at first and they were shy of using English, but a kind word, a bit of Chinese and a little clowning brought them along. Just as I would have done in a class at home, I observed the students carefully and worked the

crowd seeking the more active and forward students.As the film started and I saw my school, I felt quite a tug of emotion. Here I was, far from home, listening to familiar rock music as a backdrop to the lovely grounds and facilities of Marryatville. The students watched intently, occasionally commenting to a neighbour on a feature of the school or the Australian students

Now began the hard part, encouraging them to use English to discuss that they had seen and responding in a way that encouraged their ability to listen and comprehend and also to keep the discussion going. I was surprised by the nature of their questions. They asked very little about habits and customs and relationships at school. They clearly have the vocabulary to talk about such things and it is evident in the textbooks and the vocabulary that use in class, but it was not used to talk about these things. This is something that my students in Australia always focus on; they are fascinated by the human element and the details of relationships.

Most of questions asked by the 14 year olds in front of me focused on the material and physical details of school life such as size, buildings, number of lessons, timetable and subjects. There was quite a contrast with the types of questions that Australian students ask. This seemed to me to be connected to a differently focused cultural mentality. On reflection, many of the conversations I have had with Chinese people during work and study trips have tended on their part to relating data and interesting details such as the size of schools, how many prizes have been won, the minutiae of how many papers are corrected everyday, the content of a teaching program, the mechanics of some sort of IT and other material facets of life.

After the class, I reflected that an area that I should address as a teacher is the development of skills in students to use the foreign language, English, to construct a

bridge between their own cultural and human context and that of the native 1English user; to seek and understand what is important to them. I imagine that this means teaching in a manner that will allow the learner to become mindful of the influence of their own worldview on the way in which they employ the second language and to recognize the substantial meanings of the English speaker with whom they are conversing. In this manner there may be a way forward to develop true dialogue rather than conversations that are like the sound of one hand clapping; two monologues coexisting but not substantially interacting.

Culture is an expression of the social and economic relationships between people. Culture is simply a way of organizing these interactions in a predictable and normative fashion. For the language user, and for the teacher, this is where it becomes tricky because each pattern of culture has been formed out of particular social and economic relationships that are bound by the time at which they exist. Culture is an accretive process. It regulates our interactions in a manner that protects the common good and to some extent mollifies the individual urge to stamp oneself upon the world with scant regard for others. Each layer of culture is a macrocosm of the network of small family group interactions, both within the family and between families. These interactions are bound by our universal human needs and by our very spirit but they take on local expressions. So often in China I heard people talking in terms of their activity as being their duty. It seemed to me that people have a strong idea of a definite place in a group that is marked by status and attendant requirements for expressions of reciprocity and obligation. The Chinese students and staff with whom I was working had clear functions within the class group and their relationships with other students and with staff were heavily influenced by these. If I commented on activity or expressed thanks, the response often was It is my duty. I cannot imagine and Australian child (or adult) saying such a thing.

The whole idea of a native speaker of English as a representative of a a specific culture is problematic. There are many Englishes and each has its own culture. E.g. Indian English is built on a substrate of regional culture and Victorian/Edwardian expression with an overlay of American English techno-mediaspeak.
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One day, my colleague, who does not speak Chinese, and I were out shopping in the old Chinese part of Shanghai, the Yuyuan. I was fascinated by the way in which Rosemary and the sales persons engaged. The sales staff had sufficient English for the task in mechanical terms but their cultural paradigm did not include a Scottish, English speaking Australian. My colleague was unable to employ the social niceties we use here and did not know (and I doubt if I do!!) the formula for the oil that greases the wheel in the Chinese context. And yet the transaction proceeded and the actors all managed to construct a microcosmic social group for long enough to reach a satisfactory conclusion. Earlier attempts had failed, I suppose because the sufficient preconditions were not able to be established. As she attempted to negotiate buying pearls for her mum I was struck by an impression from the thousands of pearls and strings of pearls throughout the complex of shops. Culture is like a string of pearls that we wear to display our humanity. Each pearl is luminescent with the human spirit, regardless of whether we are rich or poor. Yet, each pearl, though connected by regulatory and transitive strings, is a separate entity, which within this have accreted generations of interactions. We can see the whole string of pearls but the interior of each one remains opaque.

So, we need a key to open a window if we care to move within our culture and also across cultures. The vehicle for this has to be language. Knowledge about culture is passive and limiting. It is language that encodes the basic social meanings and allows us to interact with others in actual rather than representational and formulaic terms. Language is the skin of the pearl of a culture; each historical stage exuding a new skin. At its root, each language gives voice to the need to satisfy basic human needs and wants- love; security; food and water; and acceptance- and the manner in which these can be negotiated and transacted.

Since all humans have the same software and hardware in their heads regarding

language and the same general conditions prevail upon them, then it is possible for any human being to learn other languages if certain fundamental conditions apply. These are:

1. Vision beyond the self as an individual member of a particular group and or

citizen of a certain place

2. A search for meanings in our sight and beyond our horizon 3.

Interest in others, and

4. Social impulses to seek inclusion in another group beyond the boundaries of the

family and immediate community

5. Motivation and needs

Language and culture have a unique relationship in that they form a dynamic combination. Within delineated contexts, the interaction between language use and cultural expression drives the development of human social and economic meaning. It is more true to say that language is embedded in culture than the obverse because language is the tool by which we manipulate the cultural meaning that is formed by our social and economic conditions. It is not possible to have one without the other. However, it is possible for persons outside a particular culture to learn to use the language tool associated with that culture in order to establish a frame of reference. Using this, they can mediate their own interaction with that culture or indeed with others if a third place is needed. Nonetheless, they remain outsiders because they are rooted in a different pearl, in a different necklace. Language forms the clasp that holds strings together.

When non-members use the language of another group, they are not impacting within the pearl, they are merely communicating along the string. At the core, they will always remain outside, as they have no direct link to the years of accretion. Language use allows them a conditional acceptance within the target group that suspends cultural norms and brings into play a sub-set of cultural accretion that is based on family groups
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negotiating their interactions with others. While a non-member may understand and replicate some of the cultural behaviour pertaining to another group, they remain attached to their own cultural allegiance and are cocooned within the host culture by the norms developed for dealing with outsiders that minimize conflict and promote cooperation. One wonders how one might appear to others in amongst a string of Chinese pearls?

Learning a foreign language is not about learning to be another culture. It is a process of learning to recognize the drives within oneself and the connection points of these within a host culture. Language is tool to jack into the powerful luminescence of another culture and to draw on that power to influence the contexts of interaction within that culture.

I dont suppose for a moment that any of this passed through the minds of the young Chinese students. But my interaction caused me to reflect on my practice as a language teacher and I thank them for the opportunity to learn and grow that they have provided me. Language teaching is often focused on methods and materials, but in some way the world of the mind and the human endeavour lies beneath the surface of these as a prime motivator in our search to connect with and understand others. For this we need to able to ask the right questions and I think that next time, I will pay more attention to teaching the students about questions, how and why they are significant and powerful. As teachers we often take the lead in asking the questions and feel frustrated when students dont ask what we expect, but I have learned that this is in itself a skill that must be explicitly taught. We can know that students have the language structures to ask the questions but this has to be brought into play actively by the teacher.