scholarly journals Role of Email in Intercultural Communication of Criticism in a Chinese English Curriculum Reform Context

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 193 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linqiong Lv
Keyword(s):  
Curriculum Reform ◽  
Classroom Behavior ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Chinese Students ◽  
Communicative Language Teaching ◽  
Third Party ◽  
English Curriculum ◽  
Cultural Conflicts ◽  
Chinese Psychology ◽  
Politeness Strategies

Western teachers working in China often experience cultural conflicts arising from, for instance, the ways that Chinese students perceive face and express criticism. To better understand these face-concerned conflicts, this paper explores the role and significance of email for a group of Chinese students to communicate pedagogical criticism with their western teacher as part of an undergraduate program in Communicative Language Teaching (CLT). A quantitative and qualitative examination of the politeness strategies employed by the Chinese students in their critical emails revealed the three roles of email: email as a safe, polite and effective channel for the Chinese students to express critical views directly (without turning to a third party) and collectively (on behalf of the other students), email as a major means for their western teacher to be informed about problems privately, and email as a springboard for the western teacher to communicate later with more other students publicly. What was criticized in the emails indicated the fundamental disparities in their perceptions of knowledge, the identity of English, and the classroom behavior of silence. Interpretation and discussion of findings were informed by the studies of Chinese psychology and the writer’s insider knowledge gained from her four-year longitudinal participant observation.

Envisioning Change in China

2014 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 86-115
Author(s):  
Dorottya Nagy
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Chinese Students ◽  
Network Organization ◽  
Chinese People ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Missionary Work ◽  
Intercultural Encounters ◽  
Lending Library ◽  
Complex Question

The present article examines the case of the Freundenkreis für Mission unter Chinesen in Deutschland (Friends of Mission to Chinese in Germany, FMCD) and its Chinesische Leihbücherei (Chinese Lending Library, CLL) to describe and analyze aspects of the complex question of the mission for China and Chinese people, with particular focus on mission work among Chinese students. By presenting the ministry of a German missionary couple, the article argues that the FMCD was one of the first, if not the first network organization after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) that envisioned Christian PRC students as important agents in shaping Christianity and generating societal transformations within and beyond China. The case of the FMCD also provides an opportunity to reflect on intercultural encounters enabled by missionary work. The article uses data collected through interviews and participant observation in 2009, 2010 and 2013.

scholarly journals The Culture of Amateur Real Estate Investing

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Garboden
Keyword(s):  
Real Estate ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Prior Experience ◽  
Investment Decisions ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Real Estate Investment ◽  
Real Estate Markets ◽  
Self Sufficiency ◽  
Depth Interviews ◽  
Do So

The majority of rental properties in the U.S. today is owned by small- to medium-sized investors, many of whom enter the trade with little prior experience. This paper considers the cultural factors that motivate these amateurs to purchase real estate–an investment with high risks and relatively poor returns. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 93 investors in three heterogeneous real estate markets, Baltimore, MD, Dallas, TX, and Cleveland, OH, combined with participant observation of 22 real estate investment association meetings (REIAs), this paper finds that amateurs who decide to become investors often do so during periods when their professional identities are insecure or they perceive their retirement portfolios to be insufficient. Through participation in real estate investment associations and other investor networks, they quickly internalize “investor culture,” embracing ideologies of self-sufficiency and risk. “Investor culture”—perpetuated by REIAs--motivates and legitimizes strategies of action that lead to increasingly leveraged investments. Third-party actors, including real estate gurus, paid mentors, and private “hard money” lenders exploit the intersection of insecurity and the propagation of investor culture to profit off amateurs’ investment decisions.

scholarly journals The English Communication and Learning Needs of Master of Business Administration Students and Curriculum Development at a Chinese University

SAGE Open ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 215824401983595
Author(s):  
Qing Xie ◽  
Jie Chen
Keyword(s):  
Curriculum Reform ◽  
Curriculum Design ◽  
English Learners ◽  
Oral Communication ◽  
Business Administration ◽  
Master Of Business Administration ◽  
Learning Needs ◽  
Business English ◽  
English Curriculum ◽  
English Students

This study investigates the communication and learning needs of Master of Business Administration (MBA) business English students and their perceptions of effective curriculum design. The research instruments are two-stage surveys of 99 MBA students from a public university in China. The results of the study show that English is not extensively used in the workplaces of MBA business English students, and that the majority of them use Chinese. Most English usage occurs in foreign businesses. The most difficult skills for MBA business English learners are found to be oral communication and listening comprehension. However, there are still very strong needs for further improvement in English communication. For the MBA business English courses, oral communication activities, especially with expatriate teachers, are particularly needed. The MBA business English courses should connect with real-world practice and be relevant to job and business needs. This study has significant implications for MBA business English curriculum reform in both Chinese and international contexts.

scholarly journals Complaint-Oriented Policing: Regulating Homelessness in Public Space

2019 ◽  
Vol 84 (5) ◽  
pp. 769-800 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Herring
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Third Party ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Homeless Men ◽  
Zero Tolerance Policing ◽  
Social Marginality

Over the past 30 years, cities across the United States have adopted quality-of-life ordinances aimed at policing social marginality. Scholars have documented zero-tolerance policing and emerging tactics of therapeutic policing in these efforts, but little attention has been paid to 911 calls and forms of third-party policing in governing public space and the poor. Drawing on an analysis of 3.9 million 911 and 311 call records and participant observation alongside police officers, social workers, and homeless men and women residing on the streets of San Francisco, this article elaborates a model of “complaint-oriented policing” to explain additional causes and consequences of policing visible poverty. Situating the police within a broader bureaucratic field of poverty governance, I demonstrate how policing aimed at the poor can be initiated by callers, organizations, and government agencies, and how police officers manage these complaints in collaboration and conflict with health, welfare, and sanitation agencies. Expanding the conception of the criminalization of poverty, which is often centered on incarceration or arrest, the study reveals previously unforeseen consequences of move-along orders, citations, and threats that dispossess the poor of property, create barriers to services and jobs, and increase vulnerability to violence and crime.

scholarly journals Speech Acts across Cultures: A Comparative Study of Chinese and Pakistani Students’ Request and Politeness Strategies

sjesr ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Amina Shahzadi ◽  
Abdul Ghaffar Bhatti ◽  
Munir Khan
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Social Distance ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Chinese Students ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Politeness Strategies ◽  
Request Strategies ◽  
Esl Learners

The examines are the different request strategies in English used by Pakistani and Chinese students according to social distance and power of interlocutors. Data comprises students from Pakistan and China enrolled in an undergraduate program at International Islamic University Islamabad, Pakistan. Blum-Kulka, House, and Kasper's (1989) taxonomy of request strategies is taken as a theoretical framework to compare the request speech act patterns of Pakistani and Chinese students. This study analyzed the request speech act in terms of head act strategies used by participants. Blum-Kulka et al. (1989) categorized the request speech act into three request strategies i.e. direct, conventionally indirect, and non-conventional indirect strategies. The study identifies similarities between Pakistani ESL learners and Chinese EFL learners in making use of mood derivable as the preferred strategies for making requests in situations of different social distance, power, and familiarity between the interlocutors.

The changing pedagogical discourses in China

2016 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wei Liu
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Curriculum Reform ◽  
National Curriculum ◽  
Language Education ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Curriculum Innovation ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Global Trends ◽  
English Curriculum ◽  
The Cross

Purpose This paper aims to explore the changing pedagogic discourses in China today, using the current wave of English curriculum innovation as a focused case. Given the cross-cultural nature of foreign language education, the change in the English as a foreign language curriculum in China has served as a fertile ground for different pedagogical ideas to emerge and to cross. The new English curriculum in China has endorsed a more communicative and humanistic view of language teaching, encouraging teachers to adopt a task-based approach to organize their classroom teaching. The new English curriculum has aroused a heated debate among Chinese scholars on the suitability of such a Western curriculum idea in the Chinese educational context on the basis of its relation to the Confucian tradition of education, the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context of China and the danger of post-colonialist imposition. Design/methodology/approach A critique is conducted on the three areas of controversies by situating the debate in the larger context of the cross-cultural understanding of the Chinese pedagogic discourse in the process of globalization and internationalization. Findings It is important for China to resist the homogenizing effect of globalization and internationalization in the area of curriculum development; however, being defensive and protective of one’s own and dismissive of others has not been and should not be the attitude of Chinese curriculum reform. The evolution of Chinese pedagogy is not only a result of Western influence but also a result of social change in the process of industrialization (Cheng, 2011). Global trends and national traditions should not be taken as extremes in an incompatible and irreconcilable dichotomy. Originality/value The three areas of debates on the new English curriculum can serve as a good lens into the evolving curriculum discourses in China. They reflect the cultural–historical, contextual and critical considerations among Chinese educational scholars in the national curriculum innovation efforts.

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