Hunan Cross Cultural Education

A new semester has begun!  I’d like to say “Welcome” to all my new students, I look forward to getting to know you over the semester!  Some of you may be nervous about this class, being taught completely in English by a native English teacher.  I know that this semester will be a challenge, but it will also be a great opportunity for you to greatly improve your English skills!

This week in class I will be giving an introduction to the class “The Society and Culture of Major English-Speaking Countries ( 英语国家社会与文化入门 )“.  This course will actually be taught over the course of two semesters, so you’ll have me as your teacher for this entire year!  During the first semester we will talk about the UK, Ireland, and Australia.  Next semester we will cover New Zealand, the USA, and Canada.  (This will be my third year teaching this class at HNIST!)

Every week I will post my presentation notes (my PPT slides) here on this website for you to view and download.  For some students, this helps them to study for the final exam without worrying that they were not able to write everything down during class.  So check back here every week for notes and other information that might be helpful for you to do well in this course!

The Webel family, 2010

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This post is for my students at the Hunan Institute of Science & Technology ( 湖南理工学院 ) who are taking the course: “The Society and Culture of Major English-Speaking Countries ( 英语国家社会与文化入门 ) : An Introduction (Book One / Second Edition)”

For my students at the Hunan Institute of Science & Technology ( 湖南理工学院 ) who are taking the course: “The Society and Culture of Major English-Speaking Countries ( 英语国家社会与文化入门 ) : An Introduction (Book Two / Second Edition)”

This week was the final week of classes before the final exam.  We continued with a concise overview of some of the important information from units 15 – 18 concerning Canada that guest teacher Erica began last week.

• New Zealand (Units 1&2)
• USA (Units 3-9, 11-13)
• Canada (Units 15-18)

If you would like to have the Presentation Notes from this week’s class, click on the link to view or download them.

For my students at the Hunan Institute of Science & Technology ( 湖南理工学院 ) who are taking the course: “The Society and Culture of Major English-Speaking Countries ( 英语国家社会与文化入门 ) : An Introduction (Book Two / Second Edition)”

This week’s lesson covered unit 12  from the textbook which is about US Foreign Policy.

If you would like to have the Presentation Notes from this week’s class, click on the link to view or download them.

For my students at the Hunan Institute of Science & Technology ( 湖南理工学院 ) who are taking the course: “The Society and Culture of Major English-Speaking Countries ( 英语国家社会与文化入门 ) : An Introduction (Book Two / Second Edition)”

This week’s lesson covered unit 11  from the textbook which is about Technology in America.  We attempted to define “technology” and then we discussed briefly the history of technology in America  from the 19th century until today.

If you would like to have the Presentation Notes from this week’s class, click on the link to view or download them.

For my students at the Hunan Institute of Science & Technology ( 湖南理工学院 ) who are taking the course: “The Society and Culture of Major English-Speaking Countries ( 英语国家社会与文化入门 ) : An Introduction (Book Two / Second Edition)”

This week’s lesson covered unit 9  from the textbook which is about Social Movements of the 1960′s.  We took a look at what is meant by “social movement” and then we discussed briefly why the 1960′s were so active with social movements.  The remainder of the class dealt with the three main movements of the 60′s; The Civil Rights Movement, The Women’s Rights Movement, and the Youth / Anti-War Movement (aka Hippie Movement.)

If you would like to have the Presentation Notes from this week’s class, click on the link to view or download them.

For my students at the Hunan Institute of Science & Technology ( 湖南理工学院 ) who are taking the course: “The Society and Culture of Major English-Speaking Countries ( 英语国家社会与文化入门 ) : An Introduction (Book Two / Second Edition)”

This week’s lesson covered unit 8  from the textbook which is about the American Education System.  We took a look at a brief history of education in America from the 17th century until today.  I pointed out that much of the info in the textbook is sorely out of date (most statistics were from the mid 80′s!) so we spent the remainder of our class time discussing the current status of things in today’s education system in America.

If you would like to have the Presentation Notes from this week’s class, click on the link to view or download them.

Why Chinese culture is not as alluring as it ought to be

I once heard an American musician who was friendly toward China say, “Every westerner who comes to China for the first time will be shocked at how many misconceptions they had before they came. Perhaps your propaganda methods have created a kind of cultural isolation.”

To call it “cultural isolation” is obviously going too far, since there are few people in the world who deny the grand history of Chinese culture, and few people reject Chinese material or food culture. At present, a “China fever” is gradually rising. However, it cannot be denied that in the case of the Chinese cultural mainstream being understood abroad, despite a certain improvement over the past few years in rejecting habits like “leftist” extremes and arrogant, one-way indoctrination, there nonetheless still exist serious problems. Internationally, our cultural dialogue overall is still stuck in a situation that is hard to accept.

Is this because of political bias? It actually is not – take the two World Expos that China has attended for example: at Hanover, Germany, in 2001, in a public opinion survey taken before the opening ceremony, China’s exhibit ranked second on the list of “exhibits you most want to visit.” So where then is the problem?

I visited the China exhibit at the Hanover Expo. What struck me most were the photographs of the Great Wall and Peking Opera masks, as well as some backlit photos of famous Chinese vistas. After that it was a smallish model of the Three Gorges, a conceptual model of a Chinese person on the moon, and finally a model of the human body labeled with acupuncture points next to some Chinese medicine. Out of all of the foreign audience who lined up to come in, few lingered at any one spot; most of them walked quickly through in a few minutes and then left.

The China exhibit at the 2005 World Expo in Aichi, Japan, obviously took a lot of work, but conceptually there was little change. At that time, there was a computer screen at the main entrance that displayed how long you would have to wait at particular moment to enter any country’s exhibit. That screen essentially became a competition board for the attractiveness of each country’s culture; for example, France was three hours, Korea three-and-a-half hours, Japan four hours. But at the entrance to China’s exhibit you hardly had to wait at all.  (more…)