Activity Theory-based Instruction Design For Teaching Chinese As A Foreign Language

Teaching Chinese as a foreign language(TCFL)is the Chinese language teaching conducted by Chinese teachers for foreign students.The heterogeneous cultural background and diverse language needs of learners determine that TCFL should promote the development of students’ intercultural communication competence in language practice.However,due to the lack of proper theoretical guidance,the instruction design of TCFL fails to fully respect the subjectivity and cultural heterogeneity of learners,which resulting the problems that the classroom activities become a mere formality and the teaching practice deviate from presupposed design.Cultural and Historical Activity Theory(CHAT)attaches great importance to the learners’ subjectivity,pays attention to the cultural context and analyzes the structure of activity system,which is consistent with the characteristics of TCFL teaching objects,teaching contents and cultural context.It provides a new methodological perspective and ideological resources for the reconstruction of instruction design of TCFL,and helps to improve the quality and level of TCFL.The instruction design of TCFL based on CHAT has been transformed to“learning activity design of Chinese as a foreign language ”.The focus of teaching is changed from “teaching” to “learning”.According to the theory of learning activity design,learning activity is the process that the subject of activity acts on the object of activity by means of intermediate instruments.The occurrence and development of learning activities is a process in which the subject of the activity gets new cognition and understanding of the problem situation and learning tasks which represents the“potential object”.With the transformation and change of the object of the activity,as the learners move from one learning activity to the next,expansive learning will be achieved by the subject in the exaction process,and their knowledge and capability will be enhanced effectively.In order to promote the development and deepen of expansive learning,the instruction design of TCFL should focus on the formation and development of the concepts of Chinese language,and promoting the creative transformation ofintercultural communicative competence through learning activity.In terms of the instruction design framework,it’s required that the activity system be taken as the basic unit,and the instructional design be reconstructed according to the basic model of the activity system.To be specific,the transformation should be promoted from assigning communicative tasks to constructing activity objects,from individual language learning to community language learning,from taking teaching measures to providing intermediate instruments.In addition,instruction designers should make in-depth analysis of the particularity and heterogeneity of cultural context and take cultural context as the basis for improving instructional design.The object of activity is the object that the subject acts on,and it is also the identity of the activity system.However,only when the learners are aware of the existence of objects and act on them that the objects in learning activities could be truly come into being.The design of activity objects should follow three principles,including sustainability,integration with motivation and horizontal expansion.As for Chinese learning activities,firstly,the object of Chinese learning activities should be integrated with the sustainability of language ability development.Chinese learning activities are in the midst of dynamic changes.The object of Chinese learning activities should go through the transformation process from vagueness to concreteness and from one activity to another.Secondly,the object of Chinese learning activities should be integrated with the learning motivation of foreigners.In order to achieve this,it is necessary for Chinese learning to change from curriculum standards to language needs,from textbook topics to communicative topics,and from classroom space to realistic contexts.Thirdly,the object of Chinese learning activities should be horizontally expanded in language communication.Through the expansion of value concept,thinking mode,emotional attitude and aesthetic quality,Chinese learners can better understand and master Chinese.It should be noted that horizontal expansion should be in line with the principles of Chinese learning,instead of diffused randomly without borders.The subject of learning should be transformed to community,and the character of the learning subject is that the learners of Chinese as a foreign language hasmulticultural background.The instruction design of TCFL should focus on building a“mycorrhizae” learning community,and developing and utilizing the diversity character of students and teachers.In order to promote the formation of "mycorrhizae" Chinese learning community,it is necessary to construct “shared object” through cross-cultural communication and adopt multiple cooperation mode to prompt Chinese learners to overcome cultural barriers.At the same time,the method of“Expansive Interaction Design” should be adopted to absorb students to participate in the instruction design.In order to maintain the vitality of the Chinese learning community in the process of expansion and transformation,it is necessary to promote its continuous development in the process of boundary crossing,including adjusting the cooperation model according to the cultural context,reconstructing the cooperation framework through discourse analysis,and absorbing external members through social exchanges.Intermediate instruments are fuzzy items provided by instructional designers,which are processed and modified by the subject of activity.The design and use of intermediate instruments should adopt the principle of “formative intervention”.The resources of intermediate instruments should be opened up,and the use of intermediate instruments should be adjusted according to specific situations.In Chinese learning,the main sources of intermediate instruments include texts of Chinese language,individual experiences derived from verbal communication and various historical evolving model.For the using of intermediate instruments,“mirror materials” should be used to get knowing of the language problems,various models should be adopted to analyze language problems,and tool constellation should be used to solve language problems.After completing the basic framework design of Chinese learning activity,instruction designers should further pay attention to and design the development process of Chinese learning activity.The development and realization of expansive learning cycle should be promoted by instruction design on the basis of the specific learning actions.In order to promote the development of expansive learning,contradictions should be regarded as the motivation rather than the obstacle.Byanalyzing the contradictions at different levels inside and outside the activity system,these contradictions could be used to promote the transformation of Chinese learning activities.At the same time,it is necessary to strengthen the organic connections between activity systems,promote the establishment of Chinese learning activity networks,and promote the development of comprehensive language ability of Chinese.In conclusion,with the aims to improve TCFL,through the taken of activity system as the basic unit of TCFL instruction design,learning activities of Chinese language are designed around the elements of the activity system and their mutual relations.The desired effect is achieved that the methodology of TCFL instruction design system could be reconstructed,teaching reform could be promoted according to the characteristics of learners and learning process,and teaching effects could be improved.