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HAOHSIANG LIAO:
Our pedagogy here

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is we would like to train
our students to become

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successful participants
in Chinese culture

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by using Mandarin as
their primary language.

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So this means we expect
students to behave in a way

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that whenever they
have an opportunity

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to interact with Chinese
people, they will find

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it comfortable from both sides.

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So that's the general idea
about our pedagogy here.

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In order to do this, besides
language proficiency,

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we're talking about the grammar.

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We're talking about
the language forms.

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We also extend our attention
to their behavioral culture.

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And we feel that this is
an essential component

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for a successful communication
in a second culture.

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The time in class, we'll usually
use it, for the most part,

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to provide students the
opportunity to perform.

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And by performance, we
mean that performance

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in the second culture
based on what we

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call the situational knowledge.

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So we feel as an
instructor, our role

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is to provide a state for
students to practice in class.

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I think the example could
be as simple as, how

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do you create your teacher
versus your friends

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in Chinese culture?

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When students ask
me, so what am I

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going to learn for
Chinese 101, I always

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tell them that
after Chinese 101,

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if you have friends who don't
know any Chinese ask you,

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so how do you speak
"hi" in Chinese,

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your answer can be more
sophisticated than saying

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"nihao," which is a general
greeting in Chinese.

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So for example, the way we
greet our teachers on campus

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is really different from the
way that we greet our friends.

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So we're trying to get students'
attention to the environments

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or the situation
they're in, for example,

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the people they
are speaking with,

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their role in the
conversation, or the place.

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So speaking with a teacher
takes different strategies

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compared to speaking with your
friends in Chinese culture,

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for example.

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We learn to do things
in foreign languages

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so that's a very fundamental
concept here that we're always

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trying to convey
to our students.

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We try to encourage them
that what you're doing here

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is to accomplish things
by using Mandarin

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as your primary language.

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I think for us, we
consider culture

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as common daily practices
and social norms

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that define an individual
to function successfully

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in a society.

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So for us, we feel one of
the priorities as a language

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instructor, our
responsibility is

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to help students prioritize
those daily practices

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and then show them the
patterns or the rules involved.

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And once students
have the opportunity

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to be exposed to those
rules and then in class,

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they have their opportunities to
practice them, to perform them

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and as an instructor,
you're providing feedback,

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then they go through this
what we call a "cycle."

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So out of each class,
they can get out

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of each 50-minute
class with a story.

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Today's story might be,
how do you decline an offer

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from your employer?

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Tomorrow's story might be, how
do you deal with conflicts?

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So this is what we
call the stories here

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and our experience shows
us that a cross-cultural

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miscommunication,
for the most part,

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they don't lie in
language proficiency.

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They lie in cultural competence.

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And that's why we would like to
bring the cultural competence

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into the core components
of our curriculum here.

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We're not saying that language
proficiency is not important.

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We're just trying to point
out that the way you behave

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in a second culture is
as important as your use

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of the language.