Abstract

The second language is the language that an individual learns and uses after acquiring the first language.The differences between second language learners' source culture and target language culture(s) would lead to cultural shock.This book focuses on the issue existing in European / American students' Chinese learning and Chinese minority students' Putonghua / foreign language learning.This work proposes culture adaptation strategies for the both learner groups respectively.

Since the reform and opening-up in China, Chinese international status has been rapidly upgrading and the number of western students studying Chinese has been increasing.In result, the vitality and vigor to the teaching of Chinese as a foreign language in China get strengthened.Generally speaking, Western students are satisfied with the learning situation in China, and their Chinese proficiency level and culture knowledge have also been improved greatly.However, during the concrete process of learning Chinese, they are perplexed about teaching beliefs/styles of Chinese teachers.Meanwhile, they also feel unaccustomed to communicative behaviors and pragmatic habits of Chinese teachers/students.They tend to show up inexplicable cultural shock in the face of new educational background and learning environment.For Chinese teachers, they are also puzzled by the discomfort that Western students show in the classroom, and sometimes they feel even at a loss.Then, what are cultural differences and conflicts that Western students face in their Chinese learning? What is the root of these differences? How do cultural factors affect Western students' Chinese learning behavior? How should we help Western students eliminate the negative effects of cultural differences on Chinese learning? Bearing these questions in mind, we investigated cultural differences and conflicts that Western students meet in Chinese learning.

Based on the theory of Socio-educational Model, 3P Teaching Model and High-low Context Cultural Hypothesis, this study adopted both quantitative and qualitative methods for the investigation.To help compare cultural values and education ideas of the respondents, we selected 113 Western students, 92 Chinese(TCFL) teachers and 93 Chinese students as the subjects.The purpose of the survey was to explore differences and conflicts between Western students' language learning styles and Chinese teachers' teaching styles, examine differences of communication styles between Western students and Chinese teachers/students,and explore Western students' cross-cultural pragmatic failures.The survey adopted the questionnaires and interviews as research instruments.In the analysis of the quantitative data, we adopted “Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS 22)” to carry out descriptive statistics, T test and chi square test for the results of learning/teaching style and communication style.Meanwhile, we made an analysis of Western students' pragmatic failures through percentage calculation.In the analysis of qualitative data, we decoded the interview data first and then put them into classifications.At the completion of all the data statistics, we analyzed culture differences and conflicts revealed by Western students in Chinese learning form three culture perspectives: learning culture of input-focus or output-focus,value culture of individualism or collectivism, hierarchy culture of high or low acceptance to power distance.By inducting and analyzing the data, this study has reached the following conclusions:

1.There are significant differences between Western students' learning styles and Chinese teachers' teaching styles.Western students have hands-on, intuitive,open-ended, extravert-oriented and holistic learning styles, while Chinese teachers have visual, introverted, concret-sequential, closure and analytical teaching styles. The differences above are reflected in 24 items.The conflicts between the two groups of people in learning and teaching styles are mainly derived from the learning culture and value culture of China and Western countries.In terms of learning culture, Western students show an obvious output-focus feature, while Chinese teachers had an input-focus feature.In regard to value culture, Western students have a strong sense of individualism, while Chinese teachers have the beliefs of collectivism.

2.As for communication styles, there are also great differences between Western students and Chinese teachers/students.The former shows significant higher means in six types of communication styles, including verbal vitality, verbal argumentation, nonverbal expressiveness, verbal relaxation, verbal openness,feeling orientation, while the latter reveals obviously higher means in three types of verbal indirectness, inter-personal sensitiveness and silence orientation.The differences above are reflected in 24 items.Generally speaking, these differences are related to the value culture of China and the West.That is, the two groups have different views in regard to releasing/suppression of expressing desire, antagonism/cooperation in speech, long/short distance in inter-personal relationship, expansion/maintenance to individual living space, and the face consciousness.

3.As for the aspect of Chinese pragmatics, the differences and conflicts between Western students and Chinese teachers/students are revealed in 26 items of nine categories, including “compliment and reply”, “criticism and reply”,“greeting/addressing”, “invitation/request and reply”, “refusal”, “apology and reply”, “gratitude”, “farewell” and “culture-featured words and sentences”.These differences are also related to the value culture and the hierarchy culture.The two groups have different points of view in aspects of egoism/altruism, privacy concept,long/short-term orientation, individuality/society-focus consciousness, universal/flexible principle for treating people, and high/low acceptance of power distance.

This study has expanded research scope of applied linguistics, enriched second language teaching/learning and intercultural communication theories,and put forward suggestions for improving the quality of teaching Chinese as a foreign language.First of all, Chinese teachers should adopt various effective ways to strengthen Western students' cross-cultural awareness, so that they can fully understand the social culture of China.Secondly, Chinese teachers should carry out classroom teaching activities in accordance with Western students' learning characteristics so as to improve the quality of Chinese teaching.Thirdly, Chinese teachers should guide the Western students to understand the teaching style of Chinese teachers and help them expand their learning style.Finally, the Chinese teachers should systematically explain the Chinese pragmatic cultural knowledge and help Western students to get rid of the negative interference from their mother tongue culture.At the same time, Chinese teachers should constantly correct the cross-cultural pragmatic failure of the Western students and improve their students' cross-cultural pragmatic competence.The research is helpful for western learners to adapt to target culture and Chinese teachers to adjust teaching methods.

Final chapter of this part specially proposes a cross-cultural communication competence model oriented by emotional cultivation.This model sets up communication competency factors between Chinese and European cultures based on interviews, and expounds competence promotion with regard to emotional factors.This model has guiding significance for European/American learners of Chinese to reduce culture shock brought from culture differences, and improve their target language interaction ability.

Key words: Second Language Learning; European / American Students; Cultural Differences; Cultural Shock and Acculturation; Learning/teaching Styles; Communication Styles; Chinese Pragmatic Failures