scholarly journals Cultural Representation in Primary School ELT Textbooks in Mainland China

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaofei Tang
Keyword(s):  
Primary School ◽  
Cultural Awareness ◽  
English Language ◽  
Mainland China ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cultural Representation ◽  
Local Culture ◽  
Cultural Elements ◽  
Foreign Culture ◽  
Textbook Series

<p>This study aims to conduct a mixed-method analysis of <i>PEP Primary English</i>, a primary school English language teaching textbook series covering eight volumes widely used in Mainland China, to depict its representation of different cultures and explore whether the cultural representation follows the National English Language Curriculum Standard.</p><p><br></p><p>The textbook analysis proceeds in three steps. The first step is to develop the criteria of categorising cultural elements presented in <i>PEP Primary English</i>. An adapted version of Kachru’s (1985, 1992) three concentric circles of World Englishes is employed to define cultural categories. The cultural elements in the textbooks are generally grouped into two categories, namely, the local culture and the foreign culture. The local culture includes all the elements in relation to the home country where this textbook series has been published and widely used – China. The foreign culture is subcategorised into 1) the Inner Circle where English is applied as the mother tongue or a primary language due to its traditional historical and sociolinguistic bases over there, such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand; 2) the Outer Circle where English is institutionalised as a <i>lingua frança</i> though it does not serve as the native language, such as India, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Singapore, and Hong Kong SAR; and 3) the Expanding Circle where English is utilised as a primary foreign language but does not play a historical or governmental role, such as China, Japan, South Korea, and Russia.</p><p><br></p><p>The second step is to tag those elements presented in the textbooks according to the established criteria of cultural categories; and to calculate their frequency in individual volumes and in the whole textbook series respectively.</p><p><br></p><p>The third step is to tabulate the frequency of cultural elements in the textbooks and to compare the features of their representation with the learning requirements for cultural awareness as stated in the National Curriculum.</p>

scholarly journals Cultural Representation in Primary School ELT Textbooks in Mainland China

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaofei Tang
Keyword(s):  
Primary School ◽  
Cultural Awareness ◽  
English Language ◽  
Mainland China ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cultural Representation ◽  
Local Culture ◽  
Cultural Elements ◽  
Foreign Culture ◽  
Textbook Series

<p>This study aims to conduct a mixed-method analysis of <i>PEP Primary English</i>, a primary school English language teaching textbook series covering eight volumes widely used in Mainland China, to depict its representation of different cultures and explore whether the cultural representation follows the National English Language Curriculum Standard.</p><p><br></p><p>The textbook analysis proceeds in three steps. The first step is to develop the criteria of categorising cultural elements presented in <i>PEP Primary English</i>. An adapted version of Kachru’s (1985, 1992) three concentric circles of World Englishes is employed to define cultural categories. The cultural elements in the textbooks are generally grouped into two categories, namely, the local culture and the foreign culture. The local culture includes all the elements in relation to the home country where this textbook series has been published and widely used – China. The foreign culture is subcategorised into 1) the Inner Circle where English is applied as the mother tongue or a primary language due to its traditional historical and sociolinguistic bases over there, such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand; 2) the Outer Circle where English is institutionalised as a <i>lingua frança</i> though it does not serve as the native language, such as India, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Singapore, and Hong Kong SAR; and 3) the Expanding Circle where English is utilised as a primary foreign language but does not play a historical or governmental role, such as China, Japan, South Korea, and Russia.</p><p><br></p><p>The second step is to tag those elements presented in the textbooks according to the established criteria of cultural categories; and to calculate their frequency in individual volumes and in the whole textbook series respectively.</p><p><br></p><p>The third step is to tabulate the frequency of cultural elements in the textbooks and to compare the features of their representation with the learning requirements for cultural awareness as stated in the National Curriculum.</p>

Aversive Response Towards Culture Fusion Is Moderated by the Source of Foreign Cultural Inflow

2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (5) ◽  
pp. 370-386 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bobby K. Cheon ◽  
Ying-yi Hong
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Cultural Representation ◽  
Local Culture ◽  
Intergroup Attitudes ◽  
Cultural Elements ◽  
Foreign Culture ◽  
Aversive Response ◽  
The Usa

Culture fusion reflects blending of elements from distinct cultures that produces a novel, hybrid cultural representation. Prior research among participants in the USA revealed that fusion of cultural elements from the USA and China could be perceived as contamination of one’s local culture and evokes disgust. It remains unknown whether this aversion to culture fusion generalizes to other samples and is contingent on perceivers’ attitudes toward the source of the foreign culture. Here, we tested these questions across two studies. Participants were exposed to different patterns of culture mixing of their own local culture and two foreign cultures (one relatively favored and one relatively disfavored). Across both studies (Singaporean participants in Study 1 and Hong Kong participants in Study 2), the results replicated prior findings suggesting that culture fusion elicits stronger negative evaluations (e.g., disgust, discomfort) compared to other patterns of culture mixing (i.e., presentation of local and foreign elements side-by-side). Importantly, a Mixing Type × Foreign Source interaction emerged, such that participants in both studies reacted more negatively to culture mixing involving a less favored (China) than a more favored (USA) culture, with negative reactions especially pronounced toward culture fusion. This aversive response was moderated by patriotism in Singapore but not in Hong Kong. These findings demonstrate that response to culture mixing depends on intergroup attitudes toward foreign cultures, and culture fusion is especially aversive when involving cultural inflows from a disfavored out-group. The contribution of geopolitical differences between Singapore and Hong Kong on these findings are also considered.

scholarly journals ELT Syllabus: Hegemonic Sabotaging of Pakistan’s Ideology at HSSC level

2018 ◽  
Vol III (I) ◽  
pp. 58-77
Author(s):  
Ejaz Mirza ◽  
Nazak Hussain ◽  
Syed Ali Shah
Keyword(s):  
Positive Attitude ◽  
English Language ◽  
Cultural Representation ◽  
English Language Teaching ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Foreign Culture ◽  
Compulsory Subject ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Target Culture ◽  
English Culture

English Language Teaching has become a compulsory subject in the curricula of many developing countries. There has been an increase in the trend of skeptic viewing of the credibility of this subject for teaching only a language and not its ideology and culture. Studies show that under the impact of ELT learners develop a positive attitude to English culture and depreciation of the indigenous one. Same is the case in Pakistan. English ideologies and cultural representation were uncovered through the application of CDA. The main ideologies found in these books were superiority of “Us/Self” and the inferiority of “Them/Other”. The paper present the source and target culture in their true perspective making the source culture part of esteem instead of the foreign culture.

Global China in 21st-Century Asian American Literature

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sunny Xiang
Keyword(s):  
American Literature ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Detective Fiction ◽  
English Language ◽  
Mainland China ◽  
Chinese American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Chinese Characters ◽  
Complex Relation ◽  
Chinese Descent

Contemporary English-language prose and poetry writers, primarily of Chinese descent, are employing a range of stylistic strategies and exploring increasingly diverse themes in their representations of China and Chineseness. Through these representations, these contemporary writers build on, adapt, and contest a historically complex relation between “global” and “China” within an American imaginary. Twenty-first-century literary novelists and poets raise many questions about this relationship. These literatures of and about “Global China” both extend from and depart from, a “Chinese American” literary tradition. For instance, writers such as Jenny Zhang, Sharlene Teo, and Wang Weike are reworking long-standing narrative tropes such as intergenerational strife and transforming conventionally ethnic genres such as the autobiography. Contemporary literary works also take more heterogeneous approaches to referencing the United States and even “the West” more generally. And, unlike a prior tradition of Chinese American literature, these works open us to consider multiple kinds of China that far exceed the putative origin point of Mainland China (the most famous instance is Kevin Kwan’s Crazy Rich Asians, which features Singaporeans of Chinese descent). On the flip side, representations of “Global China” may lack representations of identifiably “Chinese” characters (for instance, Rachel Khong’s Goodbye Vitamin). In other cases, Chinese characters may be relegated to a role, or Chineseness may be insignificant to a story’s plot. New themes and topics are emerging, most notably adoption, biraciality, mental health, and return-to-Asian journeys. Finally, the literatures of Global China include robust outgrowths of genre literature, ranging from speculative fiction to detective fiction. Writers of genre fiction include Ovidia Yu and Ted Chiang.

Diasporic literature

2011 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 309-318
Author(s):  
Melissa Lam
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Culture ◽  
English Language ◽  
Mainland China ◽  
The United States ◽  
Mainland Chinese ◽  
Asian Diaspora ◽  
Diasporic Literature ◽  
Ha Jin ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Historical Movement

Only since the 1960s has the Asian Diaspora been studied as a historical movement greatly impacting the United States — affecting not only socio-historical cultural trends and geographic ethnography, but also culturally redefining major areas of Western history and culture. This paper explores the reverse impact of the Asian America Diaspora on Mainland China or the Chinese Motherland. Mainland Chinese writers Ha Jin and Yiyun Li have left China and today teach in major American universities and reside in America. However, the fiction of both authors explores themes and landscapes that remain immersed in Mainland Chinese culture, traditions and environment. Both authors explore the themes of “cultural collisions” between East and West, choosing to write in their adopted English language instead of their mother Putonghua tongue. Central to this paper is the idea that ethnicity and race are socially and historically constructed as well as contested, reclaimed and redefined

An analysis of the representation of cultural content in English coursebooks

2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mahdi Dahmardeh ◽  
Sung-Do Kim
Keyword(s):  
High Frequency ◽  
English Language ◽  
Cultural Representation ◽  
Main Concern ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Cultural Elements ◽  
The Status ◽  
Different Cultures ◽  
The Impact

PurposeThe aim of this article was to understand about cultural representation in these coursebooks and if it is reflected the status of English as a lingua franca.Design/methodology/approachThis article is a report on a case study in the form of content analysis of different categories of culture represented in English language coursebooks used in schools of Iran. In order to do so, references to source, target, international and universal cultures were classified into four aspects: perspectives, products, practices and persons.FindingsGenerally, the findings suggested that despite the high frequency of cultural elements, the representation favoured the source culture, while the target, international and universal cultures were heavily under-represented.Research limitations/implicationsApart from the valuable contributions of the study, the implications of the study are that despite the high frequency of cultural elements, the representation favoured the source culture, while the target, international and universal cultures were heavily under-represented. Therefore, the imbalance in the content of materials on different cultures needs to be redressed. While the main concern of this investigation is the frequency of appearance, which replicates the extent of source, target, international and universal cultures represented in the coursebooks, the impact of the materials, affected by how the cultural elements are used and perceived by teachers and pupils, is beyond the scope of the present study; hence, future studies in this area are deeply encouraged, and it is recommended for further research.Practical implicationsThe implications for resolving the imbalance in cultural representation are also being explained.Originality/valueBearing in mind the importance of coursebooks as well as the role of culture in teaching the English language, this article aims at understanding about cultural representation within the newly developed Iranian English language coursebooks for schools, an issue that has never been studied by Iranian scholars with respect to the newly published materials.

Computer assisted language learning for two-byte languages: the case of Chinese

ReCALL ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Magnus Nordenhake ◽  
Roger Greatrex
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
English Language ◽  
Chinese Language ◽  
Mainland China ◽  
The United States ◽  
Computer Assisted ◽  
Computer Assisted Language Learning ◽  
Teaching Materials ◽  
Language Courses

The teaching of the Chinese language in Sweden, and indeed the whole of Scandinavia, has always suffered from an absence of suitable teaching materials. Hitherto, there has not existed any teaching course specifically adapted to the needs of Swedish students, with the result that teachers have been forced to use English-language courses produced in the United States or England, or text-books printed in Mainland China or Taiwan

scholarly journals INTRODUCING THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN PRIMARY SCHOOL = FADING AWAY AN ETHNIC LANGUAGE AMONG FUTURE YOUNG GENERATION

2021 ◽  
pp. 5-10
Author(s):  
EDY SUSENO
Keyword(s):  
Primary School ◽  
English Language ◽  
The Other ◽  
Local Culture ◽  
Young Generation ◽  
Local Language ◽  
Indonesian Government ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Ethnic Language ◽  
Local Languages

The Indonesian government puts an English lesson at the primary school. On the other hand, it has an intention to preserve local languages. The presence of the two additional lessons in the same school invites a certain problem. Through the questionnaire distributed randomly to 26 primary school parents whose children learn English and Javanese at school in 4 different cities like Surabaya, Sidoarjo, Gresik, and Malang, it could be found out that many students got the competencies of lowering the usage of local language at home, switching codes, lowering competence in implementing Javanese script and constructing sentences, unwilling to watch Javanese news, lowering local culture appreciation, and lowering the usage of local language among peers. Furthermore, in the comparative in English and Javanese learning the students had a lower interest in competing for language, appreciating culture, and literacy in Javanese.

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