A culture can be perceived differently by members of the culture and its outsiders. Additionally, individual participants involved in the culture can have varied interpretations of the practices, artifacts, and concepts within the culture based on their identities, backgrounds, and subjectivities. Therefore, it is imperative that culture is not only introduced by experts of the culture, such as professors and researcher, but also discussed and presented by new members of the culture, who were once strangers to the culture.
Following this rationale, in an effort to appeal American students who are interested in learning Chinese and Taiwanese cultures through a lens of their peers’ viewpoints and present both Chinese and Taiwanese cultures with a diversity of perspectives, the students in the author’s Chinese Culture, an advanced content-based 15-week Chinese language course, created and posted a series of short video clips on Youbute to showcase what Chinese and Taiwanese cultures mean to them with an objective of information dissemination to their target audience, communities of American students.
Striking cultural phenomena in China and/or Taiwan and why?
老外看中国、老外看台湾
Coordinate the thematic outline as a group
One-on-one assessment and feedback sessions
Almost there!
All of the students in Chinese Culture had intensively studied Chinese for at least two years and experiences visiting Taiwan and/or China. On Day 1 of the class, the students talked about what cultural phenomena were striking to them during their interactions with Chinese and/or Taiwanese cultures for the purpose to invite diverse views on Chinese and Taiwanese cultures. It was also for the author to understand the students’ perceptions as well as interest, explore the potential topics for the individual sub-projects, and coordinate a thematic outline for the project.
Youtube videos
There are video clips online made by foreigners to share their thoughts about Chinese and Taiwanese cultures. They offer diverse perspectives and are a good entry point for the students to understand how the final products will look like and their effects.
Investigate how cultures in China and Taiwan are perceived by foreigners
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TR_5mIYjthU&feature=youtu.be
The class first needed to decide the direction of this project so the series of the video clips would coherently introduce the chosen aspect of Chinese and Taiwanese cultures and appeal to our target audience—communities of American students.
It was also imperative that the project was designed in a way that would stimulate interest in wanting to know more about Chinese and Taiwanese cultures. Therefore, the students were guided back to their striking experiences with the two cultures, interview their families and friends about what they wanted to know about China and Taiwan, and research the existing materials.
The students were offered assistance from the professor (me) and our teaching assistants. They could also consult with our technology office for any technical issues. Three progress deadlines were set to help the students pace their work. The final projects were uploaded to Youtube, and the advertisement was sent to student organizations across campus and posted on the students’ personal social medias.
The language used in the video clips is Chinese with English subtitles. Each clip is 8-minute long with a topic revolving around the chosen theme. The evaluation of the project is focused on three primary areas.
1. Content 40 points
2. Organization and presentation 20 points
3. language (function, context, comprehensibility and accuracy, text,) 40 points
The implementation is underway. We have already completed the second review of the individual projects and are currently at the final stage of the projetcs.
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