‘The foreign teacher is an idiot’
Symbolic interactionism, and assumptions about language and language teaching in China.
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/lhs.v4i1.67Keywords:
Theories of language, theories of language learning, oral English, Occidentalism, communicative language teachingAbstract
This paper examines Western teachers’ and Chinese students’ assumptions about second language acquisition and the nature of language itself. It explores the interaction of outward classroom behaviours derived from these assumptions as symbols that may be misunderstood across cultures, using symbolic interactionism as a theoretical framework. Said’s Orientalism, and its mirror image, Occidentalism, inform the intercultural (mis)communication in this context, which is a public university in Shanghai. The study found that the student participants conceptualized language as a set of discrete, quantifiable items. In this view, language is learned by acquiring more items rather than by developing discourse and other competences. Students’ beliefs are at odds with the theories of language and language learning implicit in the (weak) communicative methodology used by the Western participant teachers. However, students perceived their teachers’ classroom behaviours as indicative of their ineffectiveness rather than as indicative of differences in underpinning theoretical models.
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Balagangadhara, S. N. and Keppens, M. (2009) Reconceptualizing the postcolonial project: Beyond the strictures and structures of Orientalism. Interventions 11 (1): 50–68. doi:10.1080/13698010902752731
Barthes, R. (1967) Elements of Semiology. London: Cape Publications Ltd.
Bax, S. (2003) The end of CLT: A context approach to language teaching. ELT Journal 57 (3): 278–287. doi:10.1093/elt/57.3.278
Blaxter, L., Hughes, C. and Tight, M. (2001) How to Research. Maidenhead, Berkshire: Open University Press.
Blumer, H. (1969) Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method. Berkeley, CA: University of California.
Bogdan, R. and Taylor, S. J. (1998) Introduction to Qualitative Research Methods. New York: Wiley.
Borg, S. (2003) Teacher cognition in language teaching: A review of research on what language teachers think, know, believe and do. Language Teaching 36 (2): 81–109. doi: 10.1017/S0261444803001903
Borg, S. (2006) Teacher Cognition and Language Education. London: Continuum.
Bourdieu, P. and Wacquant, L. J. D. (1992) Invitation to a Reflexive Sociology. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Cai, R. (2003) Problematizing the foreign Other: Mother, father and the bastard in Mo Yan’s ‘large breasts and full hips’. Modern China 29 (1): 108–137. doi:10.1177/0097700402238598
Charmaz, K. (2006) Constructing Grounded Theory. London: SAGE Publications.
Chinese Academy of Management Science (2009) Chinese university ranking.
Chinese Ministry of Education (2007) College English Curriculum Requirements. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education and Research Press.
Conceison, C. (2004) Significant Other: Staging the American in China. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press.
Creighton, M. L. (1995) Imagining the Other in Japanese advertising campaigns. In J. G. Carrier (ed.), Occidentalism: Images of the West 135–160. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Ellis, R. (1985) Understanding Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ellis, R. (1994) The Study of Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ellis, R. (2002) Grammar teaching: Practice or consciousness-raising? In J. C. Richards and W. A. Renandya (eds), Methodology in Language Teaching 167–174. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Escobar, A. (1995) Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Gardner, R. C. (1991) Attitudes and motivation in second language learning. In A. G. Reynolds and W. E. Lambert (eds), Bilingualism, Multiculturalism, and Second Language Learning 43–63. Montreal: McGill University Press.
Geertz, C. (1973) The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books.
Graddol, D. (2006) English Next: Why Global English may mean the End of ‘English as a Foreign Language’. London: British Council.
Green, T. (2005) Staying in touch: Tracking the career paths of CELTA graduates. University of Cambridge ESOL Research Notes 19: 7–11.
Gries, P. H. (2006) China and Chinese nationalism. In G. Delanty and K. Kumar (eds), The SAGE Handbook of Nations and Nationalism 488–499. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications Inc.
Hiep, P. H. (2007) Communicative language teaching: Unity within diversity. ELT Journal 61 (3): 193–201. doi:10.1093/elt/ccm026
Hu, G. (2005) English language education in China: Policies, progress, and problems. Language Policy 4 (1): 5–24. doi:10.1007/s10993-004-6561-7
Jin, L. and Cortazzi, M. (2003) English language teaching in China: A bridge to the future. In H. W. Kam and R. Y. K. Wong (eds), English Language Teaching in East Asia Today 131–145. Singapore: Times Academic Press.
Jin, L. and Cortazzi, M. (2006) Changing practices in Chinese cultures of learning. Language, Culture and Curriculum 19 (1): 5–20. doi:10.1080/07908310608668751
Kamberelis, G. and Dimitriadis, G. (2005) Focus groups: Stategic articulations of pedagogy, politics, and inquiry. In N. K. Denzin and Y. S. Lincoln (eds), The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.
Kelly, W. (2008) Applying a critical metatheoretical approach to intercultural relations: The case of US-Japanese communication. In M. K. Asante, Y. Miike and J. Yin (eds), The Global Intercultural Communication Reader 263–279. New York: Routledge.
Li, H. (2008) Branding Chinese products: Between nationalism and transnationalism. International Journal of Communication 2: 1125–1163.
McLaughlin, B. (2006) The monitor model: Some methodological considerations. Language Learning 28 (2): 309–332. doi:10.1111/j.1467-1770.1978.tb00137.x
Patton, M. Q. (2002) Qualitative Research & Evaluation Methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.
Phillipson, R. (1992) Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pillow, W. (2003) Confession, catharsis, or cure? Rethinking the uses of reflexivity as methodological power in qualitative research. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 16 (2): 175–196. doi:10.1080/0951839032000060635
Richards, J. C. and Rodgers, T. S. (2001) Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511667305
Said, E. W. (1979) Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books.
Said, E. W. (1986) Orientalism reconsidered. In F. Barker, P. Hulme, M. Iversen and D. Loxley (eds), Literature, Politics, and Theory 210–229. London: Methuen.
Sarup, M. (1996) Identity, Culture, and the Postmodern World. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.
Stake, R. E. (2005) Qualitative case studies. In N. K. Denzin and Y. S. Lincoln (eds), The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research 443–466. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.
Stronach, I. and Maclure, M. (1993) Jack in two boxes: A postmodern perspective on the transformation of persons into portraits. Interchange 24 (4): 353–380. doi:10.1007/ BF01435194
Suzuki, S. (2007) The importance of ‘Othering’ in China’s national identity: SinoJapanese relations as a stage of identity conflicts. The Pacific Review 20 (1): 23–47. doi:10.1080/09512740601133195
Tomasello, M. (2005) Constructing Language: A Usage-based Theory of Language Acquisition. Boston, MA: Harvard University Press.
Zheng, T. (2006) Cool masculinity: Male sex clients’ sex consumption and business alliance in urban China’s sex industry. Journal of Contemporary China 15 (46): 161–182. doi:10.1080/10670560500331815
Published
2011-01-21
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Stanley, P. (2011). ‘The foreign teacher is an idiot’: Symbolic interactionism, and assumptions about language and language teaching in China. Linguistics and the Human Sciences, 4(1), 67-89. https://doi.org/10.1558/lhs.v4i1.67
