Teaching Channel Talks Episode 101: Teaching the Beautiful Intersection of Language and Culture (w/Dr. Kaishan Kong)

Dr. Wendy Amato: Welcome to Teaching Channel Talks. My name is Wendy Amato, and as often as I can, I jump into conversations about topics that matter in education, like being multilingual and culturally competent. In this episode, Dr. Kaishan Kong is my guest, and we are all about world language education and being intercultural.

Welcome, Dr. Kong.

Dr. Kaishan Kong: Thank you, Wendy. Thank you so much for this opportunity.

Dr. Wendy Amato: Well, you and I believe that speaking a language does not mean that you know a culture. Those two are not interchangeable. Where is this confusion coming from?

Dr. Kaishan Kong: Well, I don’t know where the confusion came from, but I know that I experienced the pivotal moment of self realization that knowing a language does not necessarily mean that you know the culture.

So one small example of my personal experience, I moved to the U. S. 14 years ago. And soon after I arrived, my husband and my in laws took me to First Avenue in Minnesota, a very well known center for shows and plays. And they took me to the show called Jesus Christ is Superstar. And I’m sure many American people know about this show and the story behind, but imagine at that point, I think my English was good.

My English is like my English now, but it was my first time to the US and I was in the show for two hours. Everyone was just so excited, chanting, all the singing. I understood every single word, but I had no idea what they were doing. And so while everyone just thoroughly enjoyed this show, I came out of the show feeling really confused and feeling Um, a low point in my self confidence in language learning.

I understood every single word, but what does that even mean? And I think there was a pivotal moment that I still remember, and I cite the example to share with my students. Knowing the language does not necessarily mean that you understand the culture.

Dr. Wendy Amato: I think those are the kinds of examples that are powerful in explaining this confusion.

The words and the cultural references, they’re so separate from each other. Someone told me once that you know you’ve mastered a language when you can tell a joke or when you can be funny. But I think it’s deeper than that and it gets into having cultural knowledge. What are your thoughts?

Dr. Kaishan Kong: I agree with you and also I think probably people, part of the confusion comes from people thinking that now I see language as a tool.

Many people say language is a tool, the metaphor. Saying that I use the tool to open the door to get to know people. But I think language is way more than a tool. If you learn language in an isolated way, it does not mean that you can just speak the language and talk to people and understand the culture naturally.

I think that’s why as a language and culture professional and learner myself, I think language and culture should be learned simultaneously.

Dr. Wendy Amato: What are some strategies that you’ve seen in the classroom that tell you that a teacher is blending language and culture together?

What does it look like?

Dr. Kaishan Kong: Well, I can begin by telling you what it should not look like. Yes. From years of language teacher education, I’ve heard many teachers, including myself, many years ago when I taught language, we may say, we may tell our students, okay, Monday to Thursday, let’s learn Chinese language.

Friday, we spend 10 minutes to do the culture corner. I think that was a status. Oh, for a while and a traditional way. But I think it gets more and more obvious that it’s not the most effective way. It really already imposes to our students language and culture separate. Let’s only spend 10 minutes. So the, on the contrary, I think a good way for our students to learn language and culture is not to tell them this is a moment to learn language or culture.

Culture should just. weaving so naturally. Like we all begin teaching languages with greeting. How do you greet people in English, French, or Chinese? And while you, if teacher just teaches students ni hao, ni hao is the simple way to greet Chinese, that will be very simple, overly simple. If teachers can introduce different ways to greet people from southern part of China to northern part of China, then without telling students this is culture, the teacher is already displaying different cultural way to greet people.

Dr. Wendy Amato: Sometimes when I’m with students who are learning a new language, I hear them saying things. with new awareness of their first language. It’s almost as though there is something that happens where we realize how many different ways we say hello in English when we’re learning to say hello in another language.

You don’t use the same greeting with everybody.

Dr. Kong, you come from the south of China. You speak Cantonese, Mandarin, and English. Can you give me some examples of different greetings for different audiences?

Dr. Kaishan Kong: That’s a very interesting question.

I will say Mandarin, that’s the official language in China, and Cantonese, my first language. Some people call it a dialect, but I think by United Nations, it’s classified as a separate language, Cantonese. My observation is that Cantonese way Of greeting Cantonese in general is a very playful language, maybe because it was my first language.

I speak it in a playful way. Mandarin is an official language. I think to me, it sounds more official, especially when you’re teaching your students, you want to be culturally proper, like you say, Ni Hao, and in Mandarin. Also, when people say some of the small talks, they would like to begin with, have you eaten yet?

It’s like how you’re doing. You truly are not that caring how you’re doing. It’s a greeting. Have you eaten yet? Does not mean I invite you to lunch or dinner. It’s just one way for me to show my greeting. For Cantonese, I think it’s similar to how’s it going. in Cantonese. We may translate, How’s it going?

Beauty. How’s it going? Dear. We are not that close friends, but we may still use dear to call each other. It’s a very playful language.

Dr. Wendy Amato: I love it. Sometimes I hear people being affectionate in English, like, how are you, darling? Or have a good day, sweetie.

Dr. Kaishan Kong: I think that’s a good point. Like as a second language learner of English, this is my learning opportunity from you and I continue.

To learn in my teaching, although I teach Chinese language and culture, I myself continue to learn from my students and colleagues about such subtle differences in regional English speaking. And I think in the cultural communication and pragmatics are also a very important subject for us to teach and research.

Dr. Wendy Amato: I love this because even though you are an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire, I hear in your voice a commitment to continued learning. There’s always more for everyone to learn.

Dr. Kaishan Kong: Of course, absolutely. And I think teachers have our teachers efficacy, like our, we know our strengths, we know our limitations, and by showing our, Humility and willingness to learn.

We are helping our students know that they have a lot to learn. They don’t feel intimidated.

Dr. Wendy Amato: In your role as an associate professor, can you think of one of your favorite lessons to teach? Is there a moment in the semester or a part of a syllabus you’re like, Oh, I love this part.

Dr. Kaishan Kong: Absolutely. I can already tell you in my language and culture classes, one shared component is global virtual exchange.

And every semester, that component has always received the most positive feedback from students in their course evaluation. They work out. different, slightly differently. In my language, Chinese language class, I connect my students in the language program with international students from Chinese speaking regions on our campus.

So they, it’s not virtual, it’s interpersonal. tandem learning, but I twist it a little bit. It’s not like the traditional tandem learning that only focused on language exchange, just like what we have discussed. I intentionally embed cultural pieces inside. So these both parties, both cohorts have weekly interaction to address To talk about cultural comparing cultural differences and similarities and to practice language and support language.

My students love, love, love this relationships that they build and the impact is so positive that our university actually did a cover story. About two particular students in this program and to make long story short, these two students graduated two years ago, I think, but when they were in my class, one was international student from China.

One is a local Eau Claire young man. They became very nice tandem learning partners. They continue to communicate beyond my classes. In the end, my Eau Claire student was, he was an information system major.

 Nothing to do with Chinese particularly, but he applied for Fulbright and received a Fulbright student assistantship in Taiwan to continue his interest in Asia. And the Chinese international student, he came to our university with a developing English. He was learning from. everyone and he enjoyed this learning experience so much it created impact on him.

He is now studying for a master’s program in the U. S. and they continue to be friends. They invited each other to their hometown. So some relationships and international understanding is unquantifiable but it is precious.

Dr. Wendy Amato: When I was in school, studying world languages as a student, I remember being assigned a pen pal, and the letters took so long to go back and forth.

Today we have so many gifts because of technology, we can accelerate the time. between the exchanges and really offer a much more robust experience. Can you tell me some guidelines for the virtual exchanges or for the tandem learning partners? What advice might you give to a teacher who wants to create something like you have?

Dr. Kaishan Kong: Good question. And I’m sure many educators, language educators know about COIL, the Collaborative International Online Learning. So although mine is not part of the COIL, the program, I have the similar components to make global virtual exchange successful program. I think the biggest part and most time consuming part for me was to work with my partners, global partners.

To match our learning outcomes. Because we do not want any part of us to feel we are tokenized to serve the others. We also want to benefit and contribute. So my partner and I, actually my global Malaysian partner and I just had a meeting this morning to plan this semester’s project. So we spent a lot of time comparing our topics, our learning outcomes.

We do not compromise our learning outcomes because they’re so important, but we can adjust our schedule like topics every week. So we are talking about similar things on a weekly basis. And we also need to find a very accessible tool for both parties. Because we’re talking about equity in education, while the U.

S. has probably more accessibility to tools, we want to understand if China or Malaysia have similar access to that. And then we need to design a weekly interactional cycle between our students. Here, a small piece of logistics to take into consideration is the time difference. We are 14 hours behind Asian countries.

So we really need to spend a lot of time thinking what’s realistic. For students to work. And after we, we tackle this few important pieces, we feel we laid a good foundation for how it should be run. But then another big piece before students actually interact with each other is icebreaking. We don’t want our students to feel this is An additional task on them.

We want to excite them. Then we need to sell the story very well. We need to explain to our students separately the purpose of this program. So far, knock on wood, all my students were very excited and they were on board right away. And then we took some silly selfie pictures to send to our partners in Malaysia.

They did the same. So I think having ice breaking building community. Interaction, interactive cycle, and reflection. These three are key components. Both of our students and Malaysia or Chinese students have weekly reflection and final reflection.

Dr. Wendy Amato: About the weekly reflection, is this journaling? Is it video, vlog?

Dr. Kaishan Kong: Good question. Both, depending on our learning outcomes, our reflection tools are different. For instance, in Malaysia, my partner, they use Petalit. Because my partner’s course, when we collaborated, the course was about Yes, Creative writing. And I think the instructor wanted them to use different creative modes of communication to share their reflection.

Could be a short poem, could be a story, could be a vlog. My reflection was collected through Google form like that kind of form, because I do want my students, everyone needs to reflect on that. And some of the key questions for me to collect was whether they went through, whether they experienced communication breakdowns, because in the cultural communication, someone may have said something that you interpret differently.

If you did encounter intercultural breakdown, Tell me what happened. How did you address that? And so my questions reflect the several components in the cultural communicative competence. I check the knowledge level. I check the skills they applied in this communication. I check the attitude change. I also check whether they have critical reflection of themselves.

Dr. Wendy Amato: Can you think of an example where there was a cultural disconnect?

Dr. Kaishan Kong: There was one, but this one was not so much about the culture, it was the language breakdown, although they were speaking English. This past semester, I taught in my culture course, I taught a concept in Chinese culture called Guanxi connections.

So I was talking, sharing with students how Guanxi could be interpreted or abused. Or used in a different way to for corruption or something, but how connection itself should be used just like internationally networking does not necessarily have a bad connotation. So I wanted my students to interview their Chinese partners, what they think of Guanxi, and how is Guanxi played out in their everyday life.

But when they said that the Chinese partners A couple of Chinese students misunderstood the word guanxi because my students were using English and they were learning English. Instead, they thought of another concept. So in their reply email, they were totally talking about something else. And so my students had to figure out How to return back to the partner and shift the conversation, bring it to the correct direction.

So it was not necessarily beginning with starting with culture. It started with the language, but it tested my students skill to use the language. Welcome location to explain the word differently and bring the partner without hurting the partner’s self-esteem. Because you cannot just tell your partner, Hey, you misunderstand my English.

Your English is poor. You need to find a way to make your partner understand you. So there was one example. Sometimes when my students collaborated with Malaysian students, I think my American students, they were so careful not to offend other people because they had very little knowledge about Malaysian cultures.

They were saying some students were remaining in the superficial level to talk about cultural similarities and differences. One time the Malaysian student on the contrary had more knowledge about American society. They were more brave to talk about controversial topics in the U. S. So this Malaysian student was sharing their experiences as a transgender student in Malaysia in a Muslim culture.

Then it took my American students by surprise and wow, thank you. I appreciate your courage to share that. How do I respond so I will not offend you? So I think that was a very interesting learning moment. And the student wrote Weekly reflection and final reflection to come back to this moment to talk about how one party is more open to talk about controversies.

The other party needs to think, how can I respond in a culturally sensitive way? So moments like that are very interesting to observe.

Dr. Wendy Amato: That’s a beautiful example because I hear the care that each student was bringing to the conversation genuine interest in showing respect and appreciation, not wanting to offend anybody or be hurtful. It’s beautiful.

Dr. Kaishan Kong: Absolutely.

Dr. Wendy Amato: Dr. Kong, you’ve been published in the Modern Language Journal. What can you tell me about Crossing the River by Feeling the Stones?

Dr. Kaishan Kong: Yeah, thank you for pointing out that piece. I’m very happy and proud of that piece. As my paper mentioned, in recent years, especially after COVID, the volatility and political divide and anti Asian hatred have not only help us realize the emergency, the urgent, but also really stimulated a lot of agency from teachers, including myself, to do something.

In addition to teaching people’s intercultural awareness, I find it necessary to also point out Chinese language teachers, their struggles as they want to teach about social justice. So this piece as the Chinese proverb says, crossing the river by filling the stones, meaning that we are not certain what is the best way.

We are just experimenting as we navigate through these uncharted waters. So I think in this paper, I pointed out The structure, meaning the community, the school policies, the parents responses, students feedback, and the, our lack of local knowledges, lack of upbringing experiences in the U. S., how we try to do within our powers, to teach social justice in the meanwhile the challenges we encounter and just call out also one important piece I wanted to highlight in this article is that teaching for social justice can come in different ways and depending on our cultural identity and cultural experiences we may not show up as very Progressive revolutionary educators, but it does not mean that we are not doing what we can to teach about social justice because Chinese culture, Asian cultures, part of it is very confrontational avoidance.

 And also let’s not forget English is not our first language. So in this environment, doing social justice work, we can provide many other ways, like providing an alternative perspectives. sharing diverse stories, but teaching about social justice can come in different ways. And we should not expect all immigrant teachers to teach in the same way.

They should find a way they’re comfortable with and effective to teach.

Dr. Wendy Amato: It’s a lovely article. I’m appreciative that you took the time to have it published. It’s beautiful.

Dr. Kaishan Kong: Thank you.

Dr. Wendy Amato: Our time goes too quickly when the conversations are as good as this one. Thank you so much for being my guest in the podcast, Dr.Kong.

Dr. Kaishan Kong: Thank you so much, and thank you for your work in the field to help teachers improve their teaching and learning. It’s my pleasure. Thank you.

Dr. Wendy Amato: To our fellow educators, thank you all. If you’d like to explore topics that Dr. Kong and I discussed today, please check out the show notes at teachingchannel.

com slash podcast. Be sure to subscribe on whatever listening app you use. That will help others to find us. I’ll see you again soon for another episode. Thanks for listening.