A Contrastive Study On Teaching Methods Of Sino-US Teachers In Chinese Context From A Cross-cultural Perspective

With the rapid development of global politics and economy, international exchangesincrease greatly. In the field of education, especially higher education, more and moreforeign teachers file into China’s colleges and universities and carry out their teachingactivities together with their Chinese colleagues, among which language teachers whoinstruct English occupy a considerable proportion. Those NESTs and non-NESTs showtheir own styles and characteristics of classroom teaching in terms of ideas, methods andbehaviors, which attributes to the formation of two different classroom teaching models.For Chinese students who are non-NESSs and aim at learning English well, the two modelsdo offer their language learning some help, while the real existence of some factors such ascultural background differences and native language competence in the two models willalso give their language learning some obstacles.To further understand the two different classroom teaching models, the author made acomparative study on Sino-US teachers’ teaching methods and behaviors based on EnglishWriting Course in Yanshan University, which tries to answer the following questions:1. What are the differences of Sino-US teachers’ teaching methods in Chinese context?2. Why do those differences exist?3. What are possibly practical implications from the reasons?To answer the above questions, the author conducted an in-depth research on3Chineseteachers and3American teachers and142students from6classes. In order to ensure theauthenticity and validity of the investigation, the author adopted some research instruments,including questionnaire, video-recording and interviewing, which are respectively incorrespondence with142students,6classrooms and6teachers. Based on the data collection,analysis and discussion, the thesis draws the following conclusion:1. Sino-US teachers’ teaching ideas, methods and behaviors do differ to some extent interms of course design, way of questioning, teacher feedback, speech percentage andclassroom management, etc. 2. The relative differences of Sino-US teachers’ teaching ideas, methods and behaviorsderive from the relatively different positions of national cultures they belong to in eachcultural dimension.According to the findings, the thesis proposed a model of Sino-US team teaching, anddesigned concrete operating procedure, which will be a beneficial supplement for the twotraditional teaching models.The thesis is a trail to use Hofstede’s theory of cultural dimension to analyze andinterpret Sino-US teachers’ differences in teaching ideas, methods and behaviors, whichaims to provide a new angle for follow-up researches.