When Traditional Chinese Culture Meets a Technical ...

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Applied ResearchDaniel D. DingResearch suggests that Chinese culture highlyemphasizes collectivism while deemphasizingindividualism (Chen, 1997; Ding, 2006; Hofstede,1991). In the collective culture, people place a highvalue on harmony within a group in order to maintainorder in society (Ding, 2006). So “individuals tendto act primarily in accordance with the anticipatedexpectations of others rather than with internal wishes”(Zhong, 2008, p. 112). In class, Chinese students areencouraged “to seek guidance from others’ opinions suchas their colleagues” (Zhong, 2008, p. 118). Perhaps alarge class provides more and better opportunities than asmall one for students to learn to act according to others’expectations. Through the learning process, studentsmaintained harmony within the group (the class), thusfostering a sense of collectivism.Indeed, in my classes many students, especiallygraduate students, asked their friends to help them ifthey did not know the answer to questions I raised inclass. Even when I asked them to do in-class writtenexercises independently, they still sought help fromothers. Often, they automatically formed into smallgroups of 5 to 10 and started discussing the exercises,though they were not group work. The monitor (aParty member chosen by the university to coordinatestudents’ activities) walked from group to group to passideas from one group to another. When I told themto complete the exercises independently, the monitorexplained to me that they were helping each other outby sharing ideas on these exercises; he then invokeda Chinese idiom, “Three stupid cobblers can matchone Zhu Geliang” (a very talented primary minister inthe Three-Kingdom period), meaning they could notcomplete the in-class exercises without the concertedefforts of the collective groups. Here, the monitor, tojustify the students’ choice of group work, was invokingthe strengths of collectivism which Chinese culturestresses. The monitor added that their professors oftenencouraged them to seek help from others if they metwith hurdles in their homework. One of the advantagesof a large class, the monitor emphasized, was thatyou could obtain more ideas from others than in asmall class.Their sense of collectivism was also manifest whenthey had conferences with me. Neither the graduatenor undergraduate students ever showed up for theconferences without forming a group of around 10.They then sat down in a circle around me, expectingme to discuss their papers one by one. I told them thatconferences were more effective if they were conductedon a one-on-one basis than on a group basis, unlessthe group shared the same strengths and weaknessesin their papers. The students replied that with a groupthey could write a much better paper because they hadshared their ideas already while drafting their papers, sothat if they had conferences with me in a group, theycould learn more strategies from me and memorizemore information than one person. It seems that thesestudents here made the same invocation as the monitorin class: collectivism. They picked their group membersaccording to their programs, paper topics, and sharedacademic and personal interests. One student explainedto me that the more students there were in a class,the more choices, thus better groups. In a sense, thelarge class size also helped students form into groupsfor conferences.Because “collectivism” was upheld in class, I believedthat Bacon’s (1996) “response group” and Dale’s (1997)“co-authored writing assignments” would help me tacklethe problem of oversized classes. First, Bacon’s modelhelped me reduce conference time. In Bacon’s model,the class forms into small groups and the writers readtheir papers to the group by turns. When the reading isover, the writer listens to the group members discussinghis or her paper. Then the writer may respond with hisor her own comments. In addition to the advantageselaborated by Blackburn-Brockman (2003), thismodel gave me another advantage: It worked very wellin a culture that emphasized collectivism. Students,including undergraduate students, actively respondedto each others’ papers and helped each other makerevisions, so that when they came to the conferences,they had a better draft. That meant shorter conferencesto accommodate more students.Dale’s cooperative method helped me solve theproblem of reading too many papers. My students,graduate students in particular, were from variousschools and departments, and many of them wereterm-working on projects assigned by their schools anddepartments. I broke the class into small groups of 7to 10 according to the projects they were undertaking.This method worked beautifully because it offered anopportunity for them to collaborate with their teammembers in drafting reports, thus allowing themVolume 58, Number 1, February 2011 l Technical Communication 45
Applied ResearchA Technical Communication Program in a Chinese Universityto demonstrate their “collectivism.” Certainly, asBlackburn-Brockman (2003) has pointed out, assigningcoauthored papers for the sake of saving time onlyis not appropriate; for me, however, the coauthoredassignments did have an added advantage: Instead ofreading 300 papers a week, I read only about 80 papers.Memory-based study habits. My observationof the students’ performance in class indicates thatindeed they used rote learning as a major means tostudy. As identified in the literature from the fieldof education in general, a large number of Chinesestudents adopt memorization as a major approach tolearning (Cavanagh, 2007; Marton, Wen, & Wong,2005; Roberts & Tuleja, 2008; Watkins, 2000; Watkins& Biggs, 2001; Zhao, 2007). One reason why Chinesestudents prefer rote learning might be explained byhow Chinese professors teach. Chinese universitiesalways stress the importance of test-oriented education(Cavanagh, 2007). As I have already pointed out, thiseducational approach started in ancient China as ameans to learning Confucius’s teachings (Beamer, 1994).Despite the recent reforms in education to emphasizequality, the Chinese educational system is still largelytest-oriented (Zhao, 2007).In addition to culture, memorization-based studyis also influenced by Chinese social conditions. Chinahas a large population, and opportunities for studentsto go to college, to find jobs, or to study abroad are verylimited. In this respect, China’s test-oriented education issimply practical and realistic because it provides schoolsand universities with a “way of selecting students froma vast pool of qualified applicants” (Cavanagh, 2007).High-school students study to take college entranceexaminations; college students study to take graduateschoolentrance examinations; they also study to takeexaminations that could allow them to study abroad;they even take examinations to get a job or to getpromoted. Spaces are limited, so students must competeto get in. Thus, test results are highly valued in Chineseeducation. As Zhao (2007) points out, “test preparationoverrides national curriculum requirements” (p. 73). ForChinese students, tests offer a way out of their currentexistence to a higher and better position. In other words,“they see learning as a means to some other end” (Kong& Hau, 1996, p. 75). To succeed in these tests, studentsjust focus on the “most essential aspects rather than onthe meaning [and] the strategy adopted will be mainlyrote learning” (Ibid.).My experiences at Zhengzhou University not onlysupport the above-cited studies, but more important,they revealed that students not only employed rotelearning as study habits, but they also adopted anotherstrategy to help themselves memorize course materials—collective rote learning.Before the semester started, I had not expected tosee my Chinese students so persistent in memorizing thetexts, for I thought that I was not going to teach themto make sentences or build vocabulary; I was teachingrhetorical strategies in technical communication. But Iwas wrong. Every morning before classes began, studentswent to their classrooms to read the texts aloud againand again in order to memorize them. They even triedto memorize different ways of analyzing audience andpurpose, forms of documents, and shapes of differentcharts and graphs. During their nightly self-study time,they went to their classrooms to study the handoutsI had distributed in class earlier that day in order tocommit to memory the key words and phrases. When Iwas introducing Modern Language Association (MLA)and American Psychological Association (APA) styles ofdocumentation, students even tried to learn the specificrules of MLA and APA.They also attempted to memorize samples Idistributed in class. The first assignment in my graduateclasses asked students to write a prospectus for theresearch paper. After discussing the assignment, I passedout a couple of examples, asking my students to critiquethem in small groups so that they could learn from boththe strengths and weaknesses in the examples. Muchto my surprise, when the group activities were over,many students had already memorized two or threeparagraphs. I explained to them that it was not necessaryto commit the examples to memory, but they providedthree reasons why they thought they had to: First, theywere concerned that in the midterm or the final examI would ask them to use the phrases and words fromthe examples. Second, they memorized the phrasesand words so that they could use them in their ownprospectus. Third, they might use the words and phrasesin their other class assignments. Indeed, in their ownpapers they used phrases, sentences, and even paragraphsfrom the examples and other sources without properlydocumenting these sources. This verbatim copying of46 Technical Communication l Volume 58, Number 1, February 2011
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