| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 華語文教學系 === 102 === Cultural awareness is the ability to sense and reflect upon one’s own culture’s values, beliefs and behaviors. From the perspective of hidden curriculum, language learning material can convey the hidden culture, and reflect the cultural awareness of its cultural background.
This research used content analysis to investigate cultural awareness as found in a Chinese and a Japanese beginning level textbook. There were 2 parts to this research. The first part referenced Hymes’ (1972) concept of context structure and Sleeter’s (2007) analysis of materials to investigate the structural differences between Chinese and Japanese textbooks. The source of materials included materials catalogs, units, pictures, character settings and scenes in dialogues (e.g. restaurant, shop). The second part of this research referenced Searle’s (1976) speech act categories, and used turn taking and adjacent pairs in conversation analysis to investigate speech act adjacent pairs in Chinese and Japanese textbooks. The study concluded by comparing “query”, “gratitude”, “introduce” and “comment” speech act adjacent pairs in Chinese and Japanese textbooks.
The results showed the dialogue context structure of the Chinese textbook is indefinite; also, the character images, pictures, and the scene of dialogues are not clear. However, the Japanese textbook had a clearer context structure in the dialogue. The clear structure of the Japanese textbook demonstrates that the textbook editor has an awareness of the target users of the textbook, and can lead the user to sense the importance of context factors for Japanese.
The Chinese textbook Practical Audio-Visual Chinese had a ratio of 31% “query” and 21%“comment”. The greater use of “comment” in the Chinese textbook demonstrates that Chinese culture gives people more space to make comments. The Japanese textbook Minna no Ninhongo had a ratio of 25% “gratitude” and 22% “query”. The use of “gratitude” in the Japanese textbook reflects the tendency of people in Japan to maintain relationships with others. It also reflects the object-oriented characteristic of Japanese culture.
The research suggests that editors of Chinese language teaching materials could learn from how the editors of Japanese language teaching materials design dialogue settings, in order to attain greater clarity for presentation of the language context. Using the learner’s needs as a guide, the editor’s materials should lead the learner to an awareness of the dialogue context in order to increase the appropriateness of the materials for the learner.
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