The East Asian Studies Center 50th Anniversary Conference presents:
Mari Noda
The Ohio State University
Title: Everybody Gotta be Someplace: Contexts are Always Serious
Time: 9:15-10:15 AM
Abstract: Our judgments about everything we perceive are shaped by social contexts, which in turn are shaped by cultural, historical, technological, and environmental factors. Learners of East Asian languages today, compared to those 50 years ago, walk into our programs with a much more diverse vision of what they intend to do with the languages they study. The popular “can do” statements give benchmarks for learning and entice learners as well as program builders to be goal oriented with concrete outcome statements outlining what language learners can do in the learned language. At the risk of being less concrete, I hope to highlight the continuity between 50 years ago and now by discussing the basic principles of Performed Culture Approach (PCA). This entails discussing both the objectives and the processes. PCA exists because of our concern for the contexts of human interactions and human productivity. In terms of objectives, PCA is defined by the assumption that learning a language is for gaining the ability to participate in a specific and particular culture. In terms of process, the practice for language manipulation and expressing oneself is far from being sufficient. Can-do statements in PCA are very different from the commonly touted ones in the field. We have our students engage in constant socialization and problem solving through the use of language so that each learner builds memories of engagement, of having expressed and interpreted intentions in cultural context toward the shared goals of participants from multiple cultures. I will outline how this idea can continue to remain a constant as we face the challenge of ever-changing social contexts within which we find ourselves, including the challenge of continuously dwindling funding for humanities in universities.
Mari Noda is Professor of Japanese and is celebrating 30+ years of teaching and research in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures at Ohio State. She is the lead author of NihonGO NOW!, a new program in beginning-to-intermediate Japanese language (2021) that is based on the Performed Culture Approach. Her recent publication, Action! Japan: Field Guide to Communicating in the Culture (2017), provides activities for study abroad students in Japan, designed to enhance their learning through active participation in the culture. In 1994 she founded SPEAC (Summer Programs East Asian Concentration), which has prepared a number of students, both OSU and non-OSU and both graduate and undergraduate, to teach and learn Japanese and Chinese in cultural contexts. In the larger community, Noda serves on the Board of Directors of the Japan-America Society of Central Ohio.
Free and Open to the Public
This event is sponsored in part by a U.S. Department of Education Title VI grant to The Ohio State University East Asian Studies Center. Additional sponsors include: East Asian Studies Center, Institute for Chinese Studies, Institute for Japanese Studies, Institute for Japanese Studies, Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures, Department of History, Office of International Affairs.