ABSTRACT
This chapter explores a pedagogical design to address the challenges that advanced-level learners face when studying authentic literary works without 100% comprehension. Specifically, students read an original Chinese novel throughout the semester and attend book club style discussions in class every week to share their affective reading experiences and conduct an in-depth analysis of the novel. Pre-reading activities include watching the novel's TV adaptation, storytelling activities, and a weekly podcast project, all of which are carefully designed to scaffold the close reading of the novel. The case illustrated in this chapter adopts the Performed Culture Approach (PCA) to show how authentic text-based oral performances, such as podcasts and book club discussions, effectively help students construct useful approaches for talking about target culture literary works, ultimately, with native speakers. Through this process, students also enhance their ability to interpret the metaphoric and idiomatic aspects of the new language, which accelerates intercultural competence and target culture integration.
