Day 3
M-Tu Jan. 13-14
Share “Rituals of the Esenich”
Mini-lecture: Imagining one’s culture from the outside
Share results of interviews
About English feedback
Homework
➤ Listen to interviews, look at culture books
Books on Chinese culture in the lending library
The ultimate goal of this class is to write an essay explaining an aspect of Chinese culture for non-Chinese readers. Start thinking about what aspect you’d be most interested in writing about.
One way to think about this is, what common activity or behavior of Chinese people might a foreigner visiting China find mysterious? Listen to a few of the interviews that most interest you, and flip through the books about Chinese culture in my lending library on the first floor of CC (near CC1070) to get a sense of the kind of questions that might interest our potential readers.
Come to class ready to tell us what interviews and books you looked at and/or listened to, and one interesting thing you noticed about them.
➤ Short writing assignment
Write two paragraphs: the first paragraph explaining something intriguing or mysterious a non-Chinese person might observe about Chinese culture, and the second paragraph explaining a question that person might have about it.
Follow this template (though you can feel free to change the words somewhat):
Template for short writing assignment
When interacting with Chinese people, a foreigner in China might be struck by __________________________________. _______ _______ _________ _______ __________ __________ _________ ___________ ____________ ________ ________ _______ ________ ________________________ _________ ________ __________ ____________ ________ _________ __________ _______ _______.
Noticing this, they might wonder, ______________________________? ______________ _______ _______ _______ _______ _______ _______ _______ _______ _______ _______ _______ _______ _______ _______ _______ _______ _______ _______ _______ _______ _______ _______ _______ _______ _______ _______ _______ _______ _______ _______ _______ _______.
Think of this exercise as the “seed” out of which a paper might grow. Try to think of a behavior and question that you would actually be interested in writing an essay about.
This exercise will be ungraded. I’ll give you feedback on your language (if you’ve shown me evidence that you plan to use or keep track of the feedback I’ve already given you) and also on whether this might be a good topic to write a paper about.
➤ Read Meng Hongdang (2008) on “social scripts”
As you read this article, be thinking: What other activities or behaviors I’m familiar with could be explained using the idea of a “social script”? Come to class ready to share one example.
