As American schools from grades K-16+ create Chinese language programs, American communication with Chinese people in Chinese and by Chinese cultural standards will take place with increasing frequency and in professional contexts once dominated by English and Western culture. As a result, a sizeable task lays ahead for Chinese language pedagogues: what do we expect learners with up to 18 years of formal Chinese instruction to be able to do, professionally, upon graduation? To borrow from the language of business, how can we define 'quality product' in the field of Chinese language pedagogy?
To answer this question, the author shadowed four Americans and one Englishman who speak Chinese at work, interviewed them and two Chinese colleagues each on the subject of professional Chinese use, and obtained quantitative evaluations of the foreigners' Chinese skills from the subjects themselves, their colleagues, and three native Chinese language instructors at the Ohio State University.
The study found that Chinese people believe professional non-native speakers of Chinese excel at casual conversation, engaging in question and answer with Chinese natives and are generally skilled at demonstrating expertise in their chosen profession. Naturally, the longer an individual had been working in a given domain, the more likely it was that Chinese natives perceived them as experts. Areas in which learners could professionally benefit from improved skills included cultural appropriateness, ability to make cultural references, and professional writing. The study also found that portfolio evaluation conducted by native speakers is an accurate reflection of what native speakers think of non-native speakers' foreign language performances.
Based on the research results, it is recommended that Chinese language programs in the United States emphasize culturally-appropriate performance, incorporate domain-specific professional training at advanced levels, and evaluate their learners using a performance portfolio assessment system.