Translingual and Cultural Exchange

Outline

We plan to help the Taiwanese and the French students know each other's culture. Through the open discussion, we hope French students share their culture. In return, we will answer any questions which they ask about our culture. Through this activity, we hope that it’s not a one-way communication, but a two-way communication. On the other hands, we give them our experience and receive their special experience at the same time.

Participants

*Daniel's mom is a Taiwanese, and his father is a French. He was born in France and had lived in San Francisco for five years, so he can speak English fluently without strong French accent.

Materials 

Lasagne

Mazu Pilgrimage Activity

Topics in Our Projects

*Cuisine: Lasagne, Stinky Tofu, Steamed Bread, Gateau de Pralines,  

 Creme Brulee, Fried Bread Stick, Coussin de lyon

EX: Coussin de lyon

Festival: Mazu Pilgrimage

Brand: Chanel, Louis Vuitton 

Greeting: kissing cheek, gesture

Style: hair, beard, cute

*The word”cute” for describing people in Taiwanese culture and French culture have some differences

Taiwan: face, appearance 

France: behavior (ex: you give someone a flower and the other person may think that your behavior is cute.)

Our Pros and Cons

Three advantages of our activity:

1. We have at least one member who has basic understanding to participants’ languages. No matter the Korean participants last time or the France participants this time, our activities were based on the basic understanding to the others’ languages and cultures. As a result, I believe that we could discuss our topics a little more in depth. 

2.  Our form of activity. Because this was the open discussion, we can give and receive the information at the same time. All of us could ask questions or share our individual experiences. 

3. Our equipments! We had camera tripod so we should not hold the camera all the time. And we could search the pictures or videos for the others to explain what we just said.

Disadvantages 

1. The problem of accent. Actually, Abby and Jenny  are not so familiar with the English with French accent. Florian’s voice is lower so we couldn’t totally understand what he said sometimes. Maybe we should practice our listening skill more. 

2. Three of us have never been to France so we couldn’t ask our participants questions which were based on our own experience. It was a little pity. 

3. The last is the reliability. No matter what topics which we discussed about, can the individual represent the whole group? For example, when we asked the same question to Daniel and Florian “which delicacy is most famous and can be the symbol for Lyon?” They unexpectedly came out of different answers! Florian even never heard the food Daniel said. Mere two people could have completely different opinions so how to make sure that the information we received and gave could represent the whole group of people? We think that this was a big problem of our activity which couldn’t be easily solved.

Conclusion

Our aim is to let Taiwanese and French students know more about each other's culture, and we did learn a lot from this activity. Maybe our project topics are not exact as other groups, but we think that our advantage is we talked about many different topics, which can make us  know about a culture very quickly, but it's also a disadvantage at the same time. But after this activity, we broaden our horizons and make friends with people who come from completely different culture.