View Content #25546

By Isabelle Sackville-West, CASLS Fellow

This activity is designed to provide an example of how to use the NCSSFL-ACTFL Interculturality Can-Do Statements in the classroom in a thematic unit based around families. This activity is designed for Intermediate Chinese speakers.

Objectives: Students will be able to:

• Compare the roles of family members in their own and other cultures
• Appropriately use family kinship terms when speaking

Modes: Presentational, Interpersonal

Materials needed: Poster paper, Interculturality Kinship Handout (available in English here and in Chinese here), a video that illustrates the names of different family members (example in Chinese https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzvEw6nLvRw), Two comment threads similar to what would be found at Quoro, Answer.com, or ask.com about target language culture and kinship terms (examples in Chinese that deal with gender discrimination and appropriate terminology for grandparents are https://www.zhihu.com/question/42606633 and https://zhidao.baidu.com/question/185423769.html.

Procedure:

1. Observe: Have the students watch a video that showcases familial kinship terms. While they watch, have students jot down the kinship terms they hear that they weren’t previously familiar with.
2. Have the students take time reading over the comment threads individually and then in small groups to help one another. Students should read twice. The first time, they should highlight what they know. The second time, they should read for opinions related to the kinship terms. Then, they should work in groups to figure out what they don’t know. At the end, they should jot down observations they notice about the kinship terms used for grandparents, their cultural/historical underpinnings and how the usage of the terms has evolved in modern times.
3. Analyze: Now, conduct a class discussion. The NCSSFL-ACTFL Intercultural Communication Tool provides guidance that this conversation should be in the target language (Chinese), and teachers needing the L1 as a scaffolding mechanism are encouraged to adapt questions to a lower proficiency level, provide sentence stems in the target language to facilitate more robust interaction, and to use the L1 only when crucial to expose and clarify cultural nuances and subtleties. In the discussion, have students think about kinship terms and their origin or implications for social relations. Here are some example discussion questions:
   1. What do you notice about kinship terms for different grand-parents: i.e. 外婆 VS 奶奶. What does the 外 symbolize and why does it exist (think about the patriarchal history behind it).
   2. Look at dialectal variations and modern-day variations. For example, now maternal grandparents can also be called 姥姥 and 姥爷, especially in the northern dialects. What might this imply about modern society, or certain dialectal regions?
4. Extend: Have students create posters of their own extended family and close family friends and label them with the kinship terms they feel are appropriate. Then have students write a little reflection on the back about why they chose the terms the did—for example if they chose 姥姥VS外婆.  Note students should have the freedom to choose whichever kinship terms they feel are best as long as they can explain their choice.
5. Summarize and Reflect: Finally, bring the class back for a final discussion about their choices, and why they might have chosen to follow or diverge from traditional Chinese kinship terms.
   1. In small groups (2-3 students), have students share their posters and their reasoning.
   2. Ask if any students are willing to share their posters and reasoning with the whole class.
   3. Then, as a whole class, discuss how the Chinese kinship system is similar to and different from the American system, or any other system the students have experience with.

Notes/Modifications:

By letting students make observations and analyze kinship terms, they better understand how the roles of family members are reflected by the language used to state them.

Teachers are encouraged to take a look at their curricula and consider developing lessons that showcase how culture is bound in the target language. Phrases like kinship terms and phrases used for apologies and requests are an ideal place to start.

As has already been mentioned, the NCSSFL-ACTFL Intercultural Communication Tool recommends that class discussions be conducted in the target language but does suggest that follow-up investigation at home could be done in the L1 for deeper reflection.