Learning Chinese and making meaning – ways to develop intercultural citizenship in the foreign language classroom

Abstract

Using Chinese language teaching in an engineering department as an example, this paper explores how language teaching can meet the challenges of globalisation and the advancement of technology by fulfilling its educational function as described in Byram’s model of intercultural communicative competence. By adapting theories and practices from counselling psychology, the proposed curriculum focuses on emotions to help learners uncover emotional barriers that arise when confronted with differences. It will support learners in raising awareness and developing their capacity to negotiate differences, leading to more effective cooperation with others. The paper discusses the use of experiential exercises in the classroom. They include those developed in Chinese language pedagogy, namely the performed culture approach and those developed in humanistic psychotherapy, such as body psychotherapy. The aim is to help learners notice their own feelings, attitudes, and behaviour as well as the otherness of the other in the classroom. This approach is powerful because it is in the here and now. It utilises movements and different senses as well as cognition. It helps uncover barriers to intercultural communication hidden under the surface by making the unconscious conscious. Reflection is a key part of this process. Learners are expected to reflect on their own thinking and feelings and to make sense of the dynamics in the classroom. Learners are expected to develop reflexivity, subjectivity and intersubjective awareness while acquiring linguistic competency and social cultural rules of use.