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 Printable Version for your convenience!
Title - Introduce Chinese Culture in English
By - Huifen Lin
Primary Subject - Language Arts
Secondary Subjects - Social Studies
Grade Level - Advanced ESL Learners
Time: 3 hours
Concept / Topic To Teach:
Culture Diversity
General Goal(s):
The goal of the course is to develop ESL learners' ability to use English to introduce or describe Chinese culture to people from other countries by having them design and produce a video clip that features specific Chinese food or culture.
Specific Objectives:
* to be able to value the beauty of Chinese culture and appreciate cultural diversity.
* to be able to use English to introduce Chinese culture to foreigners interested in Chinese culture overall.
* to be able to describe Chinese culture both in written and spoken English.
* to be able to act as a tour guide to foreigners paying a short visit to Taiwan.
* to be able to comment and critique the presentation of Chinese culture from different perspectives.
Required Materials:
Reading materials of Chinese culture (English version),
I-Movie tutorial handouts
Resources: I-Movie, QuickTime Movie Player
Equipment: Internet access, Macs installed with I-Movie, Hand-held Camcorders
Related resources:
1. One Stop Chinese Culture
http://chineseculture.about.com/bl_index.htm?PM=ss13_chineseculture
2. Traditional Chinese culture in Taiwan
http://www.houstoncul.org/culdir/macr/macr.htm
3. I-Movie
http://tlt.its.psu.edu/fmc/imovie.pdf
http://www.apple.com/imovie/
4. On-line Still Photos
http://www.gio.gov.tw/taiwan-website/av/ophoto/photo04.htm
http://www.taiwanheadlines.gov.tw/art_sohp/file_painting.html
http://www.houstoncul.org/culdir/danc/danc.htm
Anticipatory Set (Lead-In):
Language and culture are inseparable. Learning a foreign language makes a language learner appreciate one's own language more, as well as cultures from other countries. In this global world, the distance between people is shortening because of the international language-English. Nowadays, people around the world need to be able to use English fluently to get others to understand or appreciate their culture. Therefore, learning to use English to present or describe one's own culture is a very important skill. A good way to develop this ability/skill is to have students explore specific Chinese culture in depth and design and produce a video to introduce it to people from different countries. The instructor can divide the class into groups, with each group choosing one specific type of culture that they are interested in and then explore it and present it in a video format. It should be interesting and students get the chance to learn vocabulary of different fields and use communicative functions in a motivating way.
Step-By-Step Procedures:
Activity One - Introduction
The instructor divides the class into groups of 4 and gives each group an article on different aspects of Chinese culture. Each group of students is expected to read through the article and summarize the main points after engaged in the group discussion. The activity is to get students' attention to the content of the lesson and tries to estimate students' understanding of their own culture. After the reading, students, as a group, report what they learned from the article. The instructor writes on the blackboard the ideas according to students' report. Generally, the activity is to brainstorm students on what topics they may be able to come up with after reading the articles that can be used as a topic of their video shooting.
Activity Two-Getting to know the Chinese culture
According to the number of groups, the instructor has students choose a topic that they may be interested in doing research and film a video about. In general, Chinese festivals/holidays, Chinese arts, food/recipe, religion, legends, travel/cities, traditions or fable stories. In this activity, to further extend students' understanding of Chinese cultures, they are asked to log on
the websites of China On-line
http://chineseculture.about.com/bl_index.htm?PM=ss13_chineseculture
and The China Experience: China Culture Index:
http://www.chinavista.com/experience/ to read more articles about Chinese culture before they have a more solid understanding of Chinese culture. Students may be able to find out the beauty as well as richness and diversity of Chinese culture and feel motivated and excited to choose one among them to do the video shooting. At this stage, students are recommended to use an on-line dictionary (Your dictionary.com: http://www.yourdictionary.com/ and Merriam-Webster OnLine: http://www.m-w.com/home.htm) to look up difficult vocabulary. The instructor should move around the classroom and provides help when necessary.
Activity Three: Design Scenario
At this stage, each group of students are going to design a scenario related to the cultural topic of their choice and write a script and storyboard for it. For example, the group that chose to explore Chinese art may have to decide what art exactly they would like to explore and search for the Internet and collect material that may fully illustrate the art. They may also need to divide the workload so that one member would be the photographer, one member may be the actor doing the demonstration or another one will be the narrator, etc. Give each group about 50 minutes to design the scenario and the instructor has to read over it and give comments or suggestions.
Activity Four: Video watching
The instructor shows the students an on-line video (http://www.gio.gov.tw/taiwan-website/av/in_02.htm) featuring Chinese culture. Point out to the students that the class is going to design and develop a 30-minute video featuring a series of Chinese cultural elements and each group has to be in charge of a session in the video production. Review the on-line video above with the students and pause at appropriate points to show students specific skills that they have to pay attention to when they do the shooting/recording in the next activity. Encourage students to take notes while viewing the video. After viewing the video, the instructor should discuss with students what they like most about the video and what they don't like most and how they are going to improve it.
Activity Five: Video shooting
Each group of students is given 20 minutes to practice the acting and another 5 minutes for rehearsing. It's advised that the instructor arrange the order of recording so that while one group is being shot, another group is doing the rehearsal so that it won't take too much time to finish recording the whole class. The instructor uses the camcorder to shoot all the sessions in sequence. It's recommended that each session should be saved on different videotapes so that each group of students can edit them individually in the next stage.
Activity Six: I-Movie workshop
The instructor is going to give an I-Movie workshop to students for them to edit the video that the instructor videotaped for them in the previous activity. I-Movie is software that is intended to be used by primary school students. Therefore, it only takes a 30 minutes tutorial for students to be able to start editing a video.
Activity Seven: Movie Editing
Students, working as a group, start to edit the new video clip. The edited video clip should not be more than 5 minutes. Students are also encouraged to add narration to the video clip to make it more vivid and this is a good chance to have them practice their speaking. Again, in this stage, the instructor should walk around the classroom and try to assist with any technological problems or language difficulties that may arise in the process of video editing.
Activity Eight: Video Critique
In the last activity, each group of students presents their finished video of the Chinese culture and invites peer comments or critiques. The instructor should focus student critique or comments on the content of the video, the language use and how well it delivers the culture rather than on the special effect of the video. The students must remember that the goal of the lesson is to develop students' reading and speaking ability to introduce Chinese culture in English rather than the use of the technology.
Closure (Reflect Anticipatory Set):
Students are going to write a short paragraph of reflection about how they like using technology, in this case, the video and video-editing in the classroom as an aid to learn the language. The reflection should be sent to the instructor via e-mail and can be used by the instructor as a reference that can be referred to at a later stage when re-teaching the lesson.
Assessment Based On Objectives:
* Student Presentation
* Essay Writing on Chinese Culture in English
Possible Connections To Other Subjects:
Culture, Social Studies, Language Arts
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