Think Globally, Teach Locally: Representation of Chinese Culture in the Chinese Textbooks of Ireland

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to investigate what and how Chinese culture is represented in the Chinese textbooks via critical discourse analysis (CDA). To address the raised research questions, the qualitative data of semi-structured interviews with the teachers who use these textbooks in the Irish context were scrutinized. It was found that these Chinese textbooks tend to provide general cultural knowledge to capture Irish students’ attention, and fall short of developing their global communicative competence (GCC). Furthermore, the integration of real-life materials into Chinese textbooks, together with practices and perspectives, is perceived as vital to the development of language skills and global citizenship education. Viewed thus, more efforts are needed to design Chinese teaching and learning materials and activities to cater for the increasing needs of Irish students, tertiary or secondary. The study is intended to shed light on the writing of Chinese teaching materials for foreign language learners locally and globally.

Keywords

• chinese culture representation
• global communicative competence
• chinese textbook
• critical discourse analysis