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Toward a Pedagogy of Conventional Expressions in Chinese Culture

Yang, Jia
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1397695945

Abstract Details

2014, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, East Asian Languages and Literatures.
Conventional expressions refer to any expression with a stable form that is commonly repeated in the routinized social interactions of a given culture. Expressions, such as “how are you?” “Nice to meet you,” are examples of such repetitions in the context of “greetings” in American culture. Conventional expressions are easily recognizable to members of a given culture so that no special efforts are needed to interpret desired meanings. They are culture specific and are often utilized to help newcomers (or novices) and language learners to be socialized in the interactions of a particular culture. Considering the importance of conventional expressions in language learning, this dissertation reports on a written-discourse-completion production test and a multiple-choice recognition test that were conducted to investigate the development of American learners’ recognition and production of conventional expressions in typical social routines in Chinese culture, such as greetings, refusals, apologies and displays of gratitude. Results show that the length of exposure to the target language environment enables students to recognize more conventional expressions, but it does not ensure the students’ abilities to produce these expressions. Students’ successful production of the target forms are more likely to be related to their uses of different study strategies. In the data, high-performing students use the strategy of “making a mental picture of a situation in which the expression is used” and the strategy of “connecting a new expression to an image or picture associated with the expression” more frequently than low performing students do. The adoption of these deep mental processing strategies enable high performing students to store and retrieve useful expressions better, and hence they are more likely to successfully produce and recognize conventional expressions. The obtained results suggest three developmental stages for students’ ability to produce conventional expressions: recognizing the expression in context, distinguishing the communicative intention conveyed by a set of related expressions, and producing the expression automatically in typical contexts that evoke the target expression. This dissertation brings the CFL field’s attention to the fact that even in ordinary talk, contemporary Chinese will often display their personal versatility and ingenuity by using a number of expressions drawn from the cultural tradition. Consequently, a foreigner’s ability to understand and use conventional expressions is often considered by Chinese speakers to be an important indicator of acculturation and high-language proficiency. Training of students to recognize, to understand, and then to automatically use these expressions in typical social situations in Chinese culture can enable students to be effective communicators in Chinese, and thus shorten their time to achieving higher level of proficiency. Empirical studies from this dissertation also show that the training should not only provide ample opportunities of practice for students to perform the target expressions in context, but also provide the coaching of effective strategies for students to notice, to interpret and then to remember these expressions.
Galal Walker (Advisor)
Marjorie K. M. Chan (Committee Member)
Charles Quinn (Committee Member)
Education; Foreign Language; Linguistics; Pedagogy; Sociolinguistics

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Yang, J. (2014). Toward a Pedagogy of Conventional Expressions in Chinese Culture [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1397695945

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Yang, Jia. Toward a Pedagogy of Conventional Expressions in Chinese Culture. 2014. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1397695945.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Yang, Jia. "Toward a Pedagogy of Conventional Expressions in Chinese Culture." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1397695945

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.
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