A Study On The Cultural Attribution Of The Conflicts In The Classroom During Teaching Chinese As A Foreign Language

With the worldwide wave of "Chinese fever" in recent years, more and more Chinese teachers go abroad and are engaged in international promotion of both Chinese language and Chinese culture. The teaching is carried out in the non-Chinese cultural environment, so Chinese teachers and local students are often involved in conflicts, which hinder the effective implementation of Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language and seriously affect the quality of instruction. What might have caused the occurrence of conflicts in the classroom after all? How should the Chinese teachers deal with these conflicts and then reduce the occurrence of such conflicts? This study focuses on these questions.The author of this study took the opportunity of teaching in the M High School of Oklahoma to make a long-term participatory observation on the class of Chinese Language and Culture, and personally experienced various kinds of conflicts which occurred in the class. Many first-hand materials were collected. This study has applied the research method of comparison, trying to explore the underlying causes of conflicts in the classroom from the viewpoint of the cultural traditions of China and the USA. Additionally, the literature method is also employed in the study to comb through related literatures, so as to extract helpful theory perspectives.This study is a case study based on the Chinese Language and Culture class in M High School of Oklahoma, United States. The author of this study takes the conflicts in the classroom such as different attentions paid by the teachers to students'personal interests and individual differences, the teacher-student relationship, class management and teaching/learning methods, caused by the differences in school educational systems of China and the USA as examples, analyzing the cultural roots for the conflicts from Hofstede's Five Dimensions of Culture. This study holds the opinion that the difference between Chinese and American cultures on the dimension of Individualism and Collectivism leads to varying degrees of concern regarding students'personal interests and individual differences from teachers'perspective; the difference in Power Distance dimension results in different relationships between teachers and students, and different class management techniques; the difference of Uncertainty Avoidance dimension brings on teachers' different teaching methods as well as the class-control, and students' different preference for study environment and tasks; the difference of Masculinity and Femininity dimension causes teachers'different expectations of ideal students; the difference of Short and Long Term Orientation dimension generates different ultimate goals for the education of the two countries.In the end, the study puts forward some reflections from the following perspectives: such as overseas Chinese language teachers'cultural awareness, teaching philosophy, teaching methods, teaching principles, pedagogical tact, and self-management of overseas Chinese language teachers.