Culture Representation in Teachers’ Talk: A Functional Analysis of Singapore’s Chinese Classroom Discourse

Abstract

According to the primary and secondary school syllabi, one of the major purposes of Chinese language teaching in Singapore is to inculcate Chinese culture and values in Chinese Singaporean youth (Ministry of Education MOE. (1992). Chinese language teaching and learning in Singapore: Report of the Chinese language review committee. Singapore: Author; MOE. (2004). Report of the Chinese language curriculum and pedagogy review committee. Singapore: Author; MOE. (2010). Nurturing active learners and proficient users: Report of mother tongue language review committee. Singapore: Author). However, the actual cultural content to be transmitted is only very briefly described in both the primary and secondary school syllabi, amounting to only a loose guideline for Chinese culture teaching. More importantly, teachers are required to restrict the teaching of culture to a certain extent to avoid the possible side effects of reducing the interest of their students in Chinese language itself (MOE. (2002). Secondary Chinese language syllabus. Singapore: Curriculum Planning and Development Division, Author; MOE. (2007). Primary Chinese language syllabus. Singapore: Curriculum Planning and Development Division, Author). The teacher in the classroom must decide what to teach, when to teach and how to teach Chinese culture. There has been no empirical research investigating how Chinese culture is taught by Singaporean teachers. To fill this gap, this chapter examines how Chinese culture is represented in teachers’ talk through an analysis of classroom discourse within a framework developed on the basis of systemic functional linguistics (SFL).