An investigation of teaching intercultural awareness in Chinese as a foreign language within the New Zealand adult beginner classroom

With globalisation, the world is rapidly evolving into an increasingly diverse international community. In this context, New Zealand faces a growing need to communicate with individuals from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds. This challenge necessitates a shift in language education from merely developing language skills to fostering intercultural competence, enabling learners to interact effectively across cultural boundaries. This thesis presents a case study examining the effectiveness of an intercultural language teaching course for adult beginner learners of Mandarin Chinese in New Zealand. The methods and strategies employed focus on promoting learners' intercultural awareness alongside language acquisition to foster intercultural communication. This qualitative action research project involved designing and evaluating a 13-week Mandarin intercultural teaching course to determine (1) which aspects of learners' intercultural awareness develop as a result of their learning experiences during the course, and (2) the perceptions of both learners and the teacher-researcher regarding the effectiveness of this teaching approach on intercultural awareness development. The qualitative data analysis revealed that classroom learning experiences significantly fostered learners' intercultural awareness across four components: cultural values, conventions of interaction, noticing ethnocentric perspectives, and adjusting intercultural attitudes. Students’ intercultural awareness grew through critical cycles of noticing, reflection, comparison, and experiential learning activities. Most learners developed a nuanced understanding of the inextricable relationship between languages and cultures, along with critical reflection on “otherness.” This perspective enabled them to step outside their own cultural frames and adopt a third-place viewpoint, facilitating contextually and culturally appropriate interactions. These findings underscore the importance of integrating language proficiency with intercultural abilities for fostering both intercultural awareness and intercultural communicative competence.