“Our [Chinese class] curriculum is based on real-life topics like dining out, shopping, asking for directions, even talking to someone about their opinions,” says Chinese Language Instructor Guangyu Hao. “My plan is to really embed these experiences within curriculum topics. Students still have the classroom learning but it’s coordinated, not separate, from these authentic experiences.”

“When we dine out, we check on Yelp because we want to know what they have and if we want to go there—so just like in regular life, students looked at the menu ahead of time and became familiar with the different dishes.”

Before the class’s field trip, Guangyu visited the restaurant to give it a try and to speak with the restaurant manager. This was important for several reasons: making sure that a server who spoke Mandarin would be on site that day, and that the restaurant and server could accommodate the lesson. “He gave a lot of feedback,” she said, also noting that he took care to instruct the students on “how to eat a particular dish; he was showing and speaking at the same time.” Such an authentic learning experience is valuable, explains Guangyu, because it “extended the learning opportunity from the original tasks as they engaged in communicative contexts and learned cultural related knowledge as well.”

This is just one way in which the Advanced Studies language class is using Task-Oriented Community-Centered Acquisition—or TOCCA—to teach students through “meaningful conversations connecting with each other and native speakers. Students embed language skills into real-life experience, which connects themselves to the community and extends learning opportunities beyond the classroom. It also helps accelerate the process of transferring explicit language knowledge to implicit language knowledge with stronger self-motivation.” 

Guangyu underscores the importance of community feedback, noting that “we always learn the language in the classroom, but it won’t be examined if you don’t try it in the real world.” As the only Chinese teacher in the classroom, students are very encouraged by her feedback, but she emphasizes that validation from a third party can be even more valuable. 

Part of making sure the students are successful in these real-life practice moments is preparation. This preparation includes not only homework, but roleplaying in class as wait staff and customers, and recording themselves ordering their meal to lay the groundwork and prepare for the trip to the restaurant. “Our students here, they try really hard, they don’t want to make mistakes—they feel if 'I need to say something, I would like to be 100% sure about it before trying.’" Students practiced frequently in class, so that they would feel confident in their skills. 

At Rain, students sampled traditional Chinese cuisine such as Mapo Tofu, Peking Duck, Shrimp Fried Rice, and Steamed Dumplings. They shared their thoughts on the different dishes with each other, read the check before paying, and received change. Upon returning from the trip, students interviewed each other about their experience and opinions, highlighting similarities and differences before writing a final essay about the project as a whole (these essays are on display on the third floor of Slocum Hall).

This reflection is an integral component of the experiential learning methodology, and is key to Guangyu’s class:

“We went somewhere, we experienced it, but if we don’t really take the time to reflect on it, it’s just a flash and is gone. I would like them to really catch the moment, reflecting not only how they perform their tasks, but how they thought it would be and how it was different: maybe the anxiety level was high going in, but the feedback received was ‘oh you speak very well!’ and they can feel like that is a moment in which they really did something independently.”

What about experiences outside of restaurants? The hope is to keep this comprehensive language practice going: units on festivals may see students visiting local community events to speak with those celebrating, or speaking to international and exchange students, or working with the arts during units that focus on painting.

Next semester, around Lunar New Year, Guangyu is preparing to have the advanced level classes and the introductory and intermediate classes work together on some collaborative projects. This gives the students a chance to not only learn some study tricks and habits from their peers, but to see the possibility of how far they can go. 

“And I want the first, second, and third levels to see that though learning Chinese is not easy, they can take challenges as bigger opportunities and really have fun with it even at the high levels!”

Videos of the experience can be found at these three links!