Critical Factors for Acculturation of Overseas Learners of Chinese: a Reconstruction of Cultural Structure

Abstract

Acculturation is significantly related to language learning. Overseas learners of the Chinese language are handicapped as they lack a language-rich and cultural environment, so they mainly depend on the circumstances that Chinese language teachers build as cultural intermediary in the acculturative process. Through interviewing teachers of Chinese, Chinese volunteers, Thai teachers, and Thai learners, the research found that overseas Chinese language teachers tend to neglect and fail to emphasis the importance of acculturation. They especially neglect the new sub-language culture among the youth in the context of catchwords and some cultural matters related to the Chinese language. They also do not recognize the important role of cultural awareness in language communication when it comes to cross-cultural communication. Overall, this could leave the learners lacking a proper understanding of traditional Chinese culture. Moreover, it does not provide the ideal framework of acculturation for learning Chinese. Therefore, it is crucial for Chinese language teachers to suitably reconstruct the Chinese cultural structure for learners during the acculturative process of their language learning.