K-12 Chinese Language Teaching, Issue 5

students do brainstorming or mind mapping by categorizing locations and through the cultural
triangle, and students gather thoughts and learn about Chinese cultural products, practices, and
perspectives. To help students better understand the relationships among the 3Ps, for example,
for the topic of “going to the Taiwanese night market (cultural practices),” teachers can introduce
a lot of new vocabulary about street food (cultural products) in Taiwan. To relate cultural
products to perspectives, for example, teachers can explain the history of Taiwanese school
uniforms (cultural products) (ACTFL, 2015). School uniforms originally came from the time of
“Taiwan under Japanese rule,” and Taiwanese people keep this tradition in schools until now
because it may unconsciously influence Taiwanese people’s values and attitudes as well as make
some social implications such that collectivism is more important than individualism in a group
(cultural perspectives). To relate cultural practices to perspectives, for example, when celebrating
for Chinese New Year (cultural practice), Chinese people always give red envelops because in
Chinese culture, people consider “red” color may bring good luck (cultural perspectives)
(ACTFL, 2015). Instructors can teach students more cultural topics among the 3Ps or provide
authentic videos for them to watch after the class. Students can perform this cultural task as an
independent learning experience in real life after instructors’ scaffolding in class. The design task
is presented below: 1) visiting places are marked on the map (Image 1) and listed in Table 1; 2)
the relationship among the 3p’s (Image 2) and the details of each P are introduced in Table 2.
Locations
Image 1