[Boyan Zhang]

Since you mentioned the impressionism, I would like to share some of my experiences seeing of the impressionists' painting this summer. My family and I went to Paris this summer and we visited the Musee d'Orsay, where exhibits some of the impressionists' work, such as Monet, Degas, and Renoir, etc. I am a big fan of impressionism myself, and I think one of the reasons that I like impressionism is because it shares some commonalities with traditional Chinese painting, which focused more on the artistic concept instead of realism. Here is a link of some traditional Chinese painting, if you are interested. 

Chinese Painting

[Boyan Zhang]

Prof. Dube mentioned a very interesting aspect of Chinese culture: color. People wear different colors in different occasions, for instance, people wear red on weddings, they wear white for funerals, and in ancient time, only kings and royal family could wear yellow, etc. I consider it especially important to incorporate Chinese culture into Chinese language teaching, so that students can make sense of what they are learning and use what they learn under appropriate context. I weave the cultural communication with my students into my daily lesson, for instance, when my students wrote their essay in red pen, I discouraged them from doing so by explaining what it means to write in red in Chinese, because in ancient China only the emperor could write in red to give comments to his subordinates’ debriefing, and it would appear rude and arrogant for ordinary people to write in red ink.

 

[Boyan Zhang]

It is interesting and eye-opening to see all the images from Japanese culture several hundred years ago until now. For the images from the ancient times, I can show some of them to my students and compare the clothing styles with that of ancient China. However, for the modern comics and animation parts, as a middle school teacher, I really need to be more selective, especially with the sexual and violent contents in those animations. For the animations that I personally watched, there will be some episodes that I might use in my class for my students to view, because some of the animations were translated from Japanese to Chinese, and certain topics are appropriate for middle school students, such as Doraemon, Chibi Maruko-chan, and Hello Kitty, etc.

 

[Boyan Zhang]

Some of my students are quite interested in politics, and one of them even wanted to become the U.S. ambassador to China when she grows up. Prof. Rosen’s seminar provided several new perspectives in terms of how I can explain Chinese politics to my students, which I found really hard to explain at times because some of the issues are quite sensitive to talk about. For instance, I sometimes face the questions such as if Taiwan is part of China, if China and the United States are friends, or what it is like to live in China under the government’s censorship, etc. With Prof. Rosen’s research and statistics, I will quote some of his opinions and data to answer my students’ questions, and ask my students to do more comprehensive research if they want to know more about certain issue.

 

[Boyan Zhang]

It is fascinating to have the opportunity to see so many Japanese postcards from the past, and Prof. Brown really provided a new perspective to look into people’s lives and the trend in the past, as well as into art history and history in general. In my Mandarin class, I might not use the Japanese postcards or sheet music, but Prof. Brown’s lectures definitely gave me some ideas in terms of how to use real everyday items and art crafts in my classroom to teach my students about Chinese language and culture. For instance, last year I came back from china, I brought back some hand fans, with traditional Chinese paintings on them, and I can use those items to illicit conversations from my students using the target language.

 

[Boyan Zhang]

On poster #2, it dipicted the successful construction of Nanjing Bridge on the Yangtze River. I can see that people from different fields, such as soldiers, workers, are very happy and very proud of this huge construction, and contributed the success to Chairman Mao's great leadership because the person in the front holds a book of Chairman Mao's quotations. The message was conveyed through the facial expression of the people in the poster, being smiling and excited. The color of the poster is quite bright, and the people were surrounded by red flags to represent the party's leadership and properity. The poster was mostly probably created during 1950s or 1960s. 

[Boyan Zhang]

Prof. Yasar mentioned several very useful strategies and techniques to keep students engaged while teachers show movie clips in class. I will use the techniques in my classrooms when I incorporate movie clips in my lesson plans. For instance, I will ask students questions before the movie and let them keep the questions in mind while watching the movie, and they also need to answer other questions after they watch the movie and write short passages to reflect on the movies. There is also another strategy Prof. Yasar mentioned that I will use in my class: I will ask students to pay attention to certain specific details in the movies and take notes, and share the details at the end of the movies. There are also some common cultural elements in Chinese movies and Japanese movies that I can talk about while watching east Asian movies, such as Buddhism and Confucianism.

 

[Boyan Zhang]

Hi Gerlinde,

Thank you for your comment and sharing your personal experiences growing up in Communist Romania. Talking about the propaganda movies I watched, I recall watching them when I was in elementary grades, around 10 years old. The characters were quite predictable, and it was very easy to tell who was on the good side, and who were the enemies. It was up until I was in high school that I realized that not all people or things had one side, and there could be different perspectives to one person and people's characters can change as well. 

[Boyan Zhang]

In the recent decades, Chinese movie industry has become more and more properous, and the quality of Chinese movies are improving as well. Sometimes I like to share my favorite Chinese movies with my students by incorporating video clips in the movie to my lesson plans. For instance, when we learned about people's age and zodiac, I played part of the movie by Jackie Chen "12 Zodiacs" to give them a sense how Chinese people used 12 zodiacs in their lives in ancient times. Jackie Chen's "12 Zodiacs" is a Hollywood style film with a lot of action scenes and adventures, as well as Chinese culture, my students loved the movie, and the concept of Chinese zodiac deeply embeded in their momery. Another example is that when we learn the story about Monkey King, I played several video clips of the various versions of the Monkey King movies, and asked students to restore the story through the movie clips they watched, and analyze the different perspectives of each version. 

[Boyan Zhang]

The North Korean propaganda movies reminded me of the Chinese propaganda movies I watched when I was a child as I grew up in China in 1980s. I remember that I got used to identifying the "good character" and the "bad character" at the beginning of the movies and proud of myself being able to make the correct prediction because the characters were so predictable in the movies: phrasing the good and the politically correct, and denouncing the bad and politically incorrect. If I am going to talk about or show my students Chinese propaganda movies, I will probably try to compare Chinese propaganda movies with Korean propaganda movies, and talk about the functions of the movies to the societies back then. I will ask students to compare the propaganda movies to the movies that they watched in the United States, and how they like each type of movie. 

[Boyan Zhang]

Hello everyone,

I am currently a Mandarin teacher in San Diego Unified School District, and this is my 4th year teaching in this district. Our school hosts Mandarin immersion program 6th through 8th grade.

Before my family moved to the west coast about 4 years ago, I taught Mandarin at college level for 6 years along the east coast. Besides teaching, I am also very interested in the research on language education and bilingualism, and I have been doing research on heritage Mandarin speakers for several years.

Originally I am from China, and I’ve been working and studying in the U.S. for more than 12 years. If you are interested in Chinese language, culture, or Asian cuisine, feel free to let me know and I will be more than happy to chat with you. Looking foward to meeting and ineracting with you soon. 

 

 

[Boyan Zhang]

Hi Jingshuang,

Glad to know that you also teach in Mandarin immersion program especially in middle school level. My colleague Susan and I are from San Diego and we teach in Mandarin immersion program in a middle school as well. Our school offers Mandarin language class and social studies taught in Mandarin as well. It would be a great opportunity for us to meet and talk about we've been doing in common. Looking forward to meeting you in person. 

 

[Author]

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