Organizer: Michael Aung-Thwin, University of Hawaii, Manoa
Chair: Ricardo Trimillos, University of Hawaii, Manoa
Fitting the Master Plan: Migration and Changes in the Subcontractual Relations of Chinese Immigrant Wives to Their Husbands’ Work
Guida C. Man, Ryerson Polytechnic University
This paper demonstrates, based on in-depth interviews with thirty middle-class Hong Kong Chinese immigrant women in Canada, that as a result of the migration process, Chinese immigrant women’s social relation to their husbands’ work has been transformed. There are two important consequences for the immigrant woman. First, her incorporation into her husband’s career is intensified, not only in the structural organization of her work (such as catering to his work schedule, and making sure that his daily sustenance is being maintained), but also in contributing directly to his work (such as helping out in his business operation). Second, the development of the astronaut phenomenon, which leaves many wives alone in Canada with the children while the husbands return to Hong Kong to work. Those wives who have had paid work outside the home had to contend with assuming housework and childcare alone, without the emotional or physical support from husbands or any other support system. As a result, the wives’ workload is further intensified.
A Thematic Approach to Heritage Language Pedagogy
Kylie Hsu, California State University, Los Angeles
This paper presents a field study of a thematic approach to teaching a third-grade language class in which Chinese-American children meet two hours each week to learn Chinese as their heritage language. Class sessions were videotaped for analysis. It was observed that in addition to teaching lessons in the textbooks, the teacher often chose a related topic or object as a theme and engaged the students in activities that centered around the theme. This paper focuses on a thematic unit on yue ‘moon.’ It discusses how the teacher taught language related to the moon through the following activities: introducing vocabulary related to the moon such as yweliang ‘moonlight’ and yueli ‘calendar’; introducing characters with a moon radical such as fu ‘clothes’ and peng ‘friend’; guessing riddles about the moon and about characters related to the moon/month; assigning compositions about the moon with illustrations; teaching the lunar calendar in terms of how it reflects the changes in the shape of the moon; describing festivals related to the lunar calendar such as Moon Festival; and ‘Lantern Festival’; telling stories (fiction) about the moon and the Moon Festival; and teaching (scientific) facts about the moon through games.
The above thematic unit provided a holistic, natural approach to teaching language through culture, art, and science. It gave the students the right kind of comprehensible input in meaningful contexts so that the acquisition process was maximized.
Miaikekkon: The Marriage of Talents of Native and Non-Native Speaker Teachers of Japanese
Kathryn Allen, University of Limerick
Whether by design or by default, most Japanese language programs combine the skills of native and non-native Japanese speaking teachers. Each background brings different experience and talents to the language program and provides students with different models of learning. Ideally, the combination should strengthen the teaching and the implementation of the syllabus. However, in reality, little thought seems to be put into the utilization of diverse talents and approaches. As a result, an opportunity is lost to gain maximum advantage for the students, the courses and the teachers themselves.
This paper will examine the interaction between these two groups of teachers, using case studies from programs in the U.S., the U.K. and Ireland in order to investigate the following: (1) What approaches do native and non-native speaker teachers use and how do these differ? (2) Is there an overall strategy for using the different talents and approaches native and non-native teachers bring to a program? If so, what is it? (3) How do native and non-native teachers feel about the roles they play in their programs? (4) What observations do native and non-native teachers have on how they cooperate and what do they suggest to improve the teaching in their programs?
Finally, based on the responses to the questions above, I would like to present an integrated, cooperative teaching model for consideration.
"A World in a World": The Influence of Chinese Poetics on the Chinese American Poetry of Arthur Sze
Dorothy Wang, Wesleyan University
Very few Chinese American poets acknowledge that Chinese poetry and poetics have had more than a passing influence on their work. Arthur Sze is an exception. He has translated Chinese poetry, and his poems show the impress of this other poetic tradition, an influence that manifests itself not only thematically (e.g., in clear and precise images) but also formally. Focusing on formal concerns, I propose that the paucity of metaphors in Sze’s poetry reflects the influence of poetic/philosophical modes of apprehending and articulating the world that differs from those common to Western poetry. "Linguistic models and thought systems are . . . inseparable," writes the critic Wai-lim Yip.
Metaphor is central to Western poetry: "A poetic metaphor . . . appears to be poetry at its source," writes Wallace Stevens. But in Chinese poetry, says Yip, the metaphoric structure "is only secondary and sometimes absent . . . these poems are, in essence non-metaphoric and nonsymbolic . . . ." In Sze’s work, images are used to reveal, deepen, and transform the world—not by insisting that there is something "behind" the image, as metaphor does by distinguishing between concrete and abstract, but by suggesting larger connections, like the "redshifting web" in Sze’s poem of that name. Sze’s poems posit a continuity between wor(l)ds rather than rupture between different wor(l)ds.
In reading Sze’s poem "The Redshifting Web," I will cite Western criticism on metaphor (e.g., by I. A. Richards and Paul De Man) and criticism on Chinese poetry by Yip, Stephen Owen, and James Liu.