The new UBC Cantonese program taught its first Summer Term CNTO 301/303 Basic Cantonese courses from this past June through August. On June 8th, 12 exchange students from Shaw College of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) visited the UBC Cantonese class and joined in a demonstration of an ultrasound experiment on teaching Cantonese headed by researcher Dr. Heather Bliss. Then the students from both CUHK and UBC interviewed each other using the target language Cantonese, followed by an entertaining presentation on popular college slang in Hong Kong universities prepared by the students from Hong Kong.
Students from both groups found the activities highly effective in terms of cultural and language exchange. One of the students from CUHK commented, “This interactive way of teaching is really good for language studying!” while another said, “I was impressed seeing so many people are willing to learn my mother tongue. It’s so much fun.” Ruie Lee, a fourth year business major at UBC, thinks those hours spent speaking with native speakers from Hong Kong were the most productive time of the course.
The CUHK group was hosted and led by Zoe Lam, a PhD candidate from the Linguistics Department. She said “The exchange is not only beneficial to UBC students but also to the CUHK students. They have got a better picture of the use of Cantonese in overseas Chinese communities, the influence of Cantonese popular culture, and Cantonese as one of the many languages spoken at home in Canada.” The Cantonese program plans to create more opportunities in the future for the students to interact with other fellow learners and native speakers of Cantonese involving the local communities as well as institutions overseas.
CUHK Cantonese Exchange
September 2, 2016
