As the world becomes one global village, individuals from different cultural backgrounds intermingle with each other in areas such as schools, businesses, sports, and the internet. This necessitates the understanding and appreciation of each culture. The cultural background plays a very important role in the academic life of a student. Highlighted herein is a case of Chinese student studying in America, a totally different culture. The paper is based on Louise Pratt’s article Arts of the Contact Zone. The article is analyzed and used in the context of this paper.
Introduction
In the article Arts of the Contact Zone, Pratt talks about the mixing of cultures, specifically in areas where individuals of different cultures must live together. She postulates that an individual within the “contact zone” listens to two different languages and is bounded by two different cultures, each of which struggles to maintain itself. In each contact zone, one culture or language is dominant and the other is subordinate: one is superior to the other. The dominant culture dictates what that culture defines as “legitimacy”. Pratt tries to argue that these factors are just imagined and their removal from the community’s conception only removes them nominally from the actual community. She further argues that there is an error in assuming that individuals in a community share same beliefs, motives, and language; factors dictated by the dominating culture or the culture in power. The subordinate communities are “marginalized” in reality and their identity is normally not being recognized by the entire system. According to Pratt, contact zones should be perfectly understood and applied in the context of communities so that the marginalized groups are recognized, both in universities and in politics. Failure of which shall make their recognition a rhetorical multiculturalism.
Pratt uses the term “contact zone” to refer to “the social space where different cultures meet, grapple, and clash with each other, mostly in the context of highly asymmetrical relationships of power, like slavery, colonialism, and their aftermaths as currently witnessed in many parts of the world.” In explaining the advantages and disadvantages of contact zones, Pratt argues that they allow people to interact between the cultures, which ultimately break the cultural boundaries. An establishment of a contact zone enables people to gain new perspectives since they are able to interact with individuals of different/foreign cultures. Described herein are community models in teaching and theorizing, with reference to Chinese community and the American community.
Contact Zones in Education
Contact zone as a place for appropriation and cultural resistance is well manifested in global education where students and teachers from different cultural backgrounds meet as active players to “produce, construct, and challenge” the design of the cultures through “day-to-day pedagogic interactions” (Singh & Doherty, 2004, p. 12). International students in Western universities are a perfect example of a contact zone where the moral dilemmas can be seen between the instructors and Western students and their respect for the non-Western cultures. In their study, Singh and Doherty found out that some instructors explicitly informed their non-Western students about the academic culture of the West. They also observed that other instructors avoided culturally controversial themes in class. In this case, the instructors and the western students represent the dominant discourse while the minority students (non-Western students) represent the subordinate group in the academic contact zone. As the subordinate group, the Chinese-American students in a university in the United States may create safe houses or social networks to obtain psychological and cultural support, as observed by Canagarajah (1997). This also makes them retain their preferred values and identity and at the same time conforming to the university’s pedagogical requirements outwardly.
Chinese Student Studying in America
A contact zone is created when a Chinese student studies in America. The student forms the subordinate culture while the instructors and the Western students form the dominant culture. Chinese culture is such that learning is deeply rooted in the Confucius’ understanding of the constituents of good learning. Right from the kindergarten and the elementary school, the Chinese student are constantly guided on how to learn through the “memory, imitation, and repetitive practices”, as shown by Cortazzi and Jin (1996, p. 181). Hu (2002) points out that the Chinese learning culture emphasizes on the use of textbooks and teachers as the sources of knowledge and information, the importance of students being mentally active rather than physically active, and the thoroughness in the learning process for knowledge accumulation. In an English course, Chinese students study literature passages through interactive reading (reading aloud to imitate the recording), listening, and absorbing the explanations of the teacher. The teacher explains the difficult points of both grammar and vocabulary and gives sentence translation exercises focusing on rote memorization and accuracy (Cortazzi & Jin, 1996).
For the purposes of international exchange and modernization, the Chinese government has so far carried out some reforms in the teaching of the English language to replace the traditional method of Audiolingualism and Grammar-Translation with the Communicative Language Teaching to help students develop the adequate levels of communicative competences in English (Liao, 2004). The Western style pedagogy advocates for experience-based and student-centeredness practices which focuses on the students, and not the books and the teachers, as contributors of knowledge; the interdependence between form and the meaning; the priority of self-expression; and lighthearted communicative activities. These Western teaching methods are in direct contrast to the Chinese teaching methods, which give priority to teacher dominance and rote learning. This is the greatest problem that faces a Chinese student studying in America.
Based on the culture, a Chinese student studying in America would always complain about the teaching methods of the American teachers. Such a student would view the American teacher as lacking systematic organization and failing to adequately deliver discrete and countable knowledge based on the standard textbooks (Ouyang, 2003). In the Chinese context, the western way of teaching is not the best. A contact zone therefore exists between the Americans (Westerns) and the Chinese. The Chinese culture of learning is considered as the subordinate culture while that of the West considered as dominant and superior. The differences in these two learning methods, the Chinese literacy tradition and the Western, depict the contact zone for a Chinese student studying in America.
Chinese literacy process requires the memorization of characters and set phrases. These tendencies result in a Chinese rhetoric which relies on repeating the set phrases and imitating the texts. The Chinese writing pedagogy is also based on the product, e.g. the test-taking skills and the correct forms achieved through the memorization and the modeling (You, 2004). The Chinese student regards the books as the sources of knowledge while the American culture considers books as sources of ideas for discussion. The Chinese student would also repeat assertions instead of explaining and providing them, as required by the American teachers. The end result is that a top Chinese student is given low scores due to lack of strong opinions and the critical stance in writing. The Chinese student is also faced with plagiarism problems due to copying. It’s quite easy for the Chinese student to produce the whole assignment through repeating a text that he/she once memorized. This clearly shows the cultural differences in understanding the relationship between learning, memory, and the text.
Most American teachers view Chinese students as having little or completely lacking experience in independent thinking and the free discussions in classroom. Chinese students and the Chinese culture, in contrast, believes that writing is meant to manipulate an individual’s memory bank of phrases and, the more the set phrases and the literary allusions used, the better and more eloquent the writer. While Americans consider plagiarism as copying, most Chinese students consider it as unfair and discouraging. A Chinese student in America would therefore get discourages more often. In Chinese colleges and universities, plagiarism is not a big issue and is actually tolerated by the administrators, ignored by the instructors, and endorsed by the students. Learning is considered as cooperative, supportive, and collaborative by the Chinese student and the reverse is true in America.
It is a real struggle for a Chinese student who studies in America due to the education contact zone. The same problem is experienced by the western teachers who work in China as they struggle to adjust to the Chinese learning culture. Based on the approaches of communicative and process writing, the Western teachers teach the Chinese students the Western learning culture (how to think critically and write directly). This however faces some resistance from the students, who feel disadvantaged since the teachers do not prepare them for what they are used to. Chinese students, however, have no options but to adopt to the American culture. For the perfect learning, the students and the teachers must find an intersection between the Western and the Chinese local learning cultures.
In a good learning environment, no culture should be considered as superior or subordinate to the other. In case of a contrast between the two cultures, such as the American and the Chinese, the learning should be looked at in a diverse perspective to incorporate both the cultures. However, in case of lack of compromise, the minority group (in this case the Chinese students in America) should struggle to make necessary adjustments and save themselves. This however, doesn’t mean that they struggle in isolation. The dominant group (the Americans) should also believe in equality and help the minority group in finding an intersection between the cultures. According to Pratt, autoethnography approach helps the subordinate group to represent itself in manner that the dominant group understands, and at the same time preserve its identity.
The Concept Map: The interaction between the Chinese students (minority culture) and the white students and the instructors (dominant culture)
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Hu, G. (2002). Potential cultural resistance to pedagogical imports: The case of communicative language teaching in China. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 15, 93-105.
Liao, X. (2004). The need for communicative language teaching in China. ELT Journal, 58, 270-273.
Ouyang, H. (2003). Resistance to the communicative method of language instruction within a progressive Chinese university. In K. M. Anderson-Levitt (Ed.), Local meaning, global schooling: Anthropology and world culture theory (pp. 122-140). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
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