New Waves - Educational Research & Development, Vol 12, No 1 (2009)

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East-West Passengers and Passages for Translingual and Transcultural Journeying

Cathy Bao Bean, Dongdong Chen

Abstract


Passing into, out of, and between different modes of thinking, talking, and living can teach learners to be more proficient in their second language and culture while better understanding their first. To achieve this goal of foreign language education in terms of raising translingual and transcultural competence, we have taken seriously what Edward Hall wrote in The Silent Language— “Culture hides much more than it reveals, and strangely what it hides, it hides most effectively from its own participant.” By portraying “familiar” events— like traveling, birthdays—through “foreign” lenses tinted with good humor, both CFL and EFL learners can appreciate both the target and native culture. By using drawings like as a metaphor for experiencing life as a Chinese-American, our cultural and linguistic doubling is a matter of switching from “duck” to “rabbit.” By “figuring out” the shapes produced by institutions of different cultures, we can clarify how our concept of self varies as a result.

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