Interaction Between Teacher And Students In A Seminar From A High Power Distance Culture

Under the background of globalization in the world, the seminary teaching method has been introduced into the classroom of Chinese universities. This teaching method aims at benefiting both teacher and students from this form of exchanging ideas or raising questions in class. The research questions in this research are described as follows:1. this study tries to examine whether or not the seminar type discussion in a high power distance culture would be the same as in a lower one;2. to what extent does "power distance" influence the interaction between college students and professors in the seminar type discussion.In order to explore the educational method, the author goes into the actual seminary class to collect discourses from teacher and students. The theoretical framework comes from one of the Hofstede's cultural dimensions, namely power distance. Critical discourse analysis and interview are used as methodologies of this research to examine influence of power distance on the interaction of teacher and students in a particular Chinese seminar at a university in China.The thesis will be divided into five chapters. The first chapter gives a basic introduction of the whole study. The second chapter introduces the two key concepts in this thesis, namely seminar and power distance and their relationship and influence on each other. The third chapter starts to examine the research questions put forward in chapter two with the methodologies which are used to investigate the particular seminar selected in a Chinese university. Data will be thoroughly analyzed in that chapter. A further exploration and discussion will be made in chapter four where the deeper meaning of this case study is elaborated and explained in detail. The last chapter draws the conclusion and expounds the implications and future values of this thesis.In conclusion, the interference of power distance towards the seminar teaching method has both advantages and disadvantages. And it is believed that there are many other types of seminar with various styles of interaction between teacher and students in China and they must be functioning in many different ways. In this paper only one seminar is selected to be investigated and described. Therefore, future researches can focus on the influence of power distance on different types of seminars in China.