My third-year Chinese language students sometimes asked me questions via emails. I’ve noticed that most of them would like to compose their emails in Chinese rather than in English. Some of them, fearing that their Chinese would cause confusions, further explained their questions in English.
Although I didn’t have any problem understanding their Chinese, my first response was to reply them in English which I thought would be clearer than my Chinese that may include vocabulary and structures beyond their level. However, I then realized my English reply might discourage my students’ motivation of using Chinese, since it may be perceived as a negative reaction to their Chinese. Moreover, now that the students would take the effort to express their ideas with their limited Chinese, why couldn't I try to modify my Chinese for their benefit?
What I learned from the experience is: In native-and-nonnative online communication, it is a challenge for both sides to understand each other without the help of nonverbal cues. For nonnative speakers, the difficulty lies in how to make the maximum use of the limited amount of words and structures they learned to express complicated ideas; on the other hand, for native speakers, the problem is how to effectively manipulate the language by intentionally simplifying vocabulary and structures. At this point, both sides will benefit from their communication by overcoming the obstacles.
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That's so interesting! I've had my own questions about emails I get from and send to students, but since I don't usually share a language other than English with my students, this issue hasn't come up for me. I think it's great that your students write to you in Chinese! I wonder if you could somehow bring a discussion of these issues into the your class?
ReplyDeleteI agree, quite interesting--I think encouraging your students to use the L2 is very important--don't send them the message that you'd prefer to communicate 'for real' in English because you can't understand their Chinese, or they'll give up for sure. Modification is a very good idea--or maybe a 'half and half' policy, where you tell them they can write up to half of their message in English if they need to. Maybe that will alleviate communication problems.
ReplyDeleteI thought that sounded interesting, too, especially after today when, in another class, someone gave a brief summary by someone? & Swain about L2 learners using their L1s to communicate with their peers outside of class because they view the classroom as one speech community and outside as another in which they need to use vernacular language that they don't learn in the L2 classroom.
ReplyDeleteI would definitely email them in Chinese and ask them to email you if they don't understand something.. or you could include the translation either at the end of the email or in a separate email for them if they wanted to see it.