ABSTRACT

The Third Space and Chinese Language Pedagogy presents the Third Space as a new frame through which foreign language pedagogy is conceptualized as a pedagogy of negotiating intentions and expectations in another culture.

The field of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) in the past decades has been expanding rapidly at the beginning and intermediate levels, yet it is lacking in scholarship on the true advanced level both in theory building and research-supported curriculum and material development. This book argues that it is time for CFL to go beyond merely satisfying the desire of gazing at the other, whether it is curiosity about the other or superiority over the other, to focusing on learning to work with the other. It reimagines the field as co-constructing a transcultural Third Space where learners are becoming experts in negotiating intentions and expectations in another culture. It presents a range of research-based CFL pedagogical scholarship and practices especially relevant to the advanced level and to the goal of enabling learners to go past fans or critics to become actors/players in the game of cross-lingual and intercultural cooperation.

chapter |6 pages

Introduction

Third Space and Chinese language pedagogy: possibilities of and paths to cross-lingual and cross-cultural cooperation

chapter 2|19 pages

Native speaker effects, C2 receptivity of learner and co-construction of Third-Space personae

A pedagogy of target culture expectation

chapter 3|23 pages

Negotiating intentions in intercultural conversational interactions

Excusing oneself from a family gathering

chapter 4|31 pages

Striving for the Third Space

An American professional’s experiences in Chinese workplaces

chapter 5|18 pages

Establishing domain expertise in the Third Space

Constructing language learning motivation to perform beyond proficiency

chapter 6|22 pages

Online forum as Third Space?

CFL learners’ experiences on an online knowledge-sharing community

chapter 7|20 pages

Why we perform