A Culture-based Approach to Business Chinese Teaching

Abstract

There is no denying that cross-cultural competency is the key to business success in this era of globalization. Correspondently, culture is an important component in business Chinese learning. However, even though most business Chinese textbooks contain some culture content, the input is rather limited. To enhance learners' cultural awareness so as to achieve fluency in business communication, a culture-based approach to business Chinese teaching is essential. This paper discusses the authors' experience in teaching business Chinese. The learners were a group of international students enrolled in undergraduate programs in northern Taiwan. The students were from diverse cultural backgrounds. In the training program, cultural products such as film, literature, song, advertisement, and newspaper in the target language were introduced to involve learners in constructing their cross-cultural business knowledge. The paper starts with a review of the principles borrowed from the study of teaching English for Specific Purposes (ESP) as well as the theories of andragogy and constructivism. Since business Chinese learners are adults, they bring to the second language classroom with their real world experience. Through cooperative learning and interaction, students enhance their cross-cultural competency autonomously. Business culture is composed of different layers: country culture, regional culture, company culture, functional culture, sector culture and team culture. Through various assigned tasks, learning resources and activities, teachers can facilitate learners to evolve from being aware to become active knowledge seekers. In this classroom research, reflective journals were used to get student feedback. To promote culture-based learning, there is a pressing need to establish a database of culture learning resources for business Chinese teaching and learning.