Superior Chinese Proficiency and Global Debate

Superior Chinese Proficiency and Global Debate Song Jiang China Review International, Volume 21, Numbers 3 & 4, 2014, pp. 244-256 (Review) Published by University of Hawai'i Press DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/cri.2014.0023 For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/646921 Access provided by University of Hawaii @ Manoa (24 Feb 2017 23:55 GMT) 244 China Review International: Vol. 21, Nos. 3 & 4, 2014 72. Monier Monier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary (1899; repr., Delhi: Nataraj Books, 2015), p. 27. 73. Mather, A New Account of Tales of the World, p. 462. 74. Zhuangzi jishi, 4.150; cf. Graham, Chuang-tzŭ, p. 69. 75. Knechtges, Wen xuan, 3:79. 76. Zhuangzi jishi, 3.119. 77. Han shu, 65.2846. 78. Wen xuan, 29.1360. 79. See Owen, “Deadwood,” p. 159. 80. For details see Henry Serruys, “Hun-T’o: Tulum, Floats and Containers in Mongolia and Central Asia,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 44 (1981): 105–119. 81. Wilhelm, Book of Changes, p. 335. 82. Han Feizi jijie 韓非子集解 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1998), 25.201. 83. Schafer, “What and How Is Sinology?,” T’ang Studies 8–9 (1990–1991): 42. 84. Waley, Book of Songs, p. 127. 85. Cf. Wen xuan, 14.632; Knechgtes, Wen xuan, 3:79. 86. James Legge, The Chinese Classics, vol. I: Confucian Analects, The Great Learning, The Doctrine of the Mean (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1960), p. 389. 87. Zhuangzi jishi, 25.895. 88. See David R. Knechtges, The Han shu Biography of Yang Xiong (53 b.c.–a.d. 18) (Tempe: Center for Asian Studies, 1982), p. 143 n. 497. 89. See Robert Ford Campany, To Live as Long as Heaven and Earth: A Translation and Study of Ge Hong’s Traditions of Divine Transcendents (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), p. 53. 90. Han shu, 87A.3536; Knechtges, Han shu Biography of Yang Xiong, p. 26. Superior Chinese Proiciency and Global Debate Dana Scott Bourgerie, Rachel Yu Liu, and Lin Qi. Mastering Chinese through Global Debate [群英论辩：高级汉语教程]. Tony Brown and Jennifer Bown, consulting editors; foreword by Cornelius Kubler. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2016. xv, 175 pp. Paperback $39.95, isbn 978-1-62616-305-8. © 2017 by University of Hawai‘i Press Driven by the increase in demand from public and private sectors for language professionals, US government institutions have set out to produce professional Features 245 proiciency language speakers identiied by the Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR) scale’s Level 3 and higher as the primary instructional goal since the early 1980s (Leaver and Campbell 2015). Such increased demands challenged the language education output in higher education and gave rise to a proiciency movement subsequent to the continuous development of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages’ (ACTFL) proiciency guidelines throughout the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s. The proiciency movement, together with the changes in national security over the past decade, directly transformed traditional higher education’s focus to producing speakers of foreign languages from the Intermediate level into the Advanced/Superior levels, as deined in the ACTFL guidelines (Martin 2015). As perhaps the most rapidly growing ield in language education in the United States, teaching Chinese as a second language has made tremendous advances in curriculum design, material development, textbook production, and acquisition and pedagogy research over the past two decades. However, these accomplishments have been achieved mainly at the Novice and Intermediate levels as a continuation of traditional trends. Despite the emerging demand for Chinese speakers at the Professional or Advanced/Superior levels, pedagogical exploration and material development for these desirable levels have not been given suicient attention in the ield. Although current inadequacies in the Professional or the Advanced/Superior level instruction could be attributed to many diferent reasons, there are a few indubitably responsible for this situation. These include the linguistic and contextual complicity of Chinese at higher levels, the nature of postintermediate learner populations in terms of speciic goals and objectives, diverse professional interests, widespread backgrounds, and the lack of innovative and suitable pedagogical approaches. As a response to these challenges, Mastering Chinese through Global Debate [群英论辩：高级汉语教程] is a timely resource to ill the void in Chinese teaching methods and materials at the Professional and Superior levels in the ield. This book will play an important role in promoting the shit of instructional focus from Intermediate to Advanced/Superior for Chinese-language teaching in both higher education and government institutions in the United States. In this review, I will irst examine key elements of the Professional and Superior level guidelines deined by the ILR and ACTFL and outline the proiciency requirements for speakers at these levels. Following that, I will present a review of the pedagogical innovation of advanced foreign language through global debate, which serves as the framework for this book. I will then provide an overview of the book’s structure as well as summaries and critiques for each unit. Last, I will comment on the signiicant contributions of this book and relect on aspects I see as missing and share some recommendations for future improvement. I conclude this review with a general evaluation. 246 China Review International: Vol. 21, Nos. 3 & 4, 2014 Professional and Superior Competence as Deined by ILR and ACTFL Initially conceived in the early 1950s and improved in the mid-1980s, ILR standards were developed as an interagency efort to take inventory of the language ability of government employees and to measure employees’ language proiciency skills. The ILR Scale contains six levels from 0 (no functional ability) to 5 (equivalent to an educated native speaker). In the mid-1980s, additional “plus” levels were added on top of each 0–5 base level. The ILR 3 level, termed as General Professional Proiciency, was set as the expected goal by most government institutions. Also, in the 1980s, ACTFL developed its own proiciency guidelines for academic use based on the ILR deinitions. In 2012, ACTFL further reined the system with a more complete scale including Distinguished, Superior, Advanced, Intermediate, and Novice, resulting in ive distinct levels with speciic high, mid, and low sublevels for Advanced, Intermediate, and Novice. While the ILR standards are primarily implemented in language programs for government, the ACTFL guidelines are used in foreign-language teaching and assessment in higher education. Over the past decades, the ILR and ACTFL have worked closely together to ensure the complementary articulation between these two scales. Despite the diferent purposes of the two guidelines, since the early 2000s, increased national security and personal interest in gaining advantages in the globalized economy have forced higher education institutions to consider generating more Professional or Superior level students. With the establishment of equivalencies between ILR and ACTFL (i.e., Level 2 and Advanced; Level 3 and Superior), higher level proiciencies, which were deined as Superior and beyond in ACTFL and Level 3 and above in ILR, are commonly recognized by both the government and academia as target proiciencies in their respective practices. To deine language proiciency at the target levels, Child (1987) put out a Text Modes Theory and used Evaluative and Projective modes to capture the essentials. Although this theory was initially drawn from written texts, it has since become a generalized criterion employed to describe language qualities in all modalities. Under the Evaluative mode, language users need to respond to facts, situations, and events with analysis, opinion, or commentary. In Projective mode, the users are required to take a novel or creative approach to understanding literary texts and must be able to handle languages with highly individualized or culturespeciic forms of discourse, abstract expressions, metaphors, and symbolism. The ACTFL and ILR guidelines put the functions and tasks at these levels in more speciic terms and provide working descriptions for diferent modalities. According to the speaking guidelines, high proiciency speakers in general should be able to discuss abstract issues extensively, support opinions, hypothesize, and handle linguistically unfamiliar (i.e., not previously encountered) situations. They are expected to understand language created with the purpose of evaluating societal issues through the use of abstract linguistic formulations, opinions with detailed supporting facts, inference, hypothesis, analysis, evaluation, profound Features 247 cultural references, and ideas presented “between the lines” (Dirgin 2014). In terms of concrete tasks, users are required to understand evaluative statements, opinion/ editorial pieces, social/cultural/political issues, and personal views. The linguistic features necessary at these levels include use of abstract and concrete lexicons, abstract linguistic formulations used to create complex sentences and paragraphs, fully extended and philosophical discourse, domain-speciic vocabulary (e.g., politics, inance, trade, international relations, environmental protection, science, technology), rhetorical devices, metaphors, semiotics, etc. (Dirgin 2014). Although ILR and ACTFL started of as oral proiciency testing standards, the washback impact exerts a powerful inluence on classroom teaching in various programs and helps institutions, programs, and classes to determine goals and objectives, choose thematic content and functions, and control the linguistic focus for material development and instructional practices. Over the past two decades, the most fruitful development in pedagogy and material creation in teaching Chinese as a second language has been concentrated at the Beginning and Intermediate levels. In contrast, the corresponding growth at the Professional and Superior levels has been signiicantly slower. This could be attributed to the sophisticated high-level proiciency demanded by the guidelines. Meeting these criteria poses a series of challenges to course designers, curriculum developers, and classroom instructors. Among these challenges, course format, content/context, and pedagogical approach are the most signiicant concerns. Debate as a Pedagogical Approach in Professional and Superior Level Language Teaching Teaching debate to advanced language students at universities can be traced back centuries; however, it was through Brown, Bown, and Eggett’s (2014) efort that debate received a new examination through the lens of ILR and ACTFL proiciency guidelines, was resurrected, and began to be systematically adopted for critical foreign-language education in the United States. Brown, Bown, and Eggett insightfully pointed out that “from the standpoint of language proiciency, the very criteria that constitute a well-educated native speaker likewise constitute an articulate debater” (p. 73). They correlated the language skills essential in debate with the Professional and Superior proiciency criteria and argued for the efectiveness of teaching debate skills in contributing to the improvement of Superior level second language proiciency. Based on a well-designed debate course in Russian, they proposed an innovative teaching approach, Mastering Languages through Global Debate. The teaching and learning outcomes of this Russian course conirm that debate educates students about social, political, and global issues; fosters critical thinking and analytical skills; nurtures respect for opposing opinions; increases capacity to relate to individuals of diferent persuasions; and makes use of complex linguistic constructions and rhetorical strategies (Brown, Bown, and Eggett 2014). Their study further validates that incorporating global debate in university foreign 248 China Review International: Vol. 21, Nos. 3 & 4, 2014 language instruction is a critical step toward achieving Professional and Superior proiciencies. The efective curriculum design and successful classroom practice in this Russian project led to the publication of Mastering Russian through Global Debate and gave birth to the Mastering Languages through Global Debate textbook series. This textbook series follows the pedagogical framework, topic selection, task design, and organizational structure developed by Brown, Bown, and Eggett (2014), aimed at extending the best practices drawn from Russian to other foreign languages critical for both academia and government. The primary objective of this book series is to “facilitate acquisition of Superior level proiciency through the forum of oral debates and written position papers” (p. 76). Four languages — Russian, English, Chinese, and Arabic — are included in this series as of now. Following the publications in Russian (2014) and English (2014), Mastering Chinese through Global Debate (2016) marks the third volume in this series. Textbook Structure and Content Mastering Chinese through Global Debate is authored by three experienced Chinese professors: two from Brigham Young University and one from Nanjing University in China. Both institutions are renowned for their Professional and Superior level Chinese programs. They share the same program goals of providing an enhanced learning environment for US students to attain the highest levels of Chineselanguage proiciency and cultural understanding. Brigham Young is the host of one of the earliest Chinese Flagship Centers in the nation, whose mission is to “create global professionals who can function culturally and linguistically in the professional Chinese world.” Nanjing University is the designated Study Abroad Center to support direct enrollment for qualiied Chinese Flagship students from the United States and helps students build relationships with Chinese professionals. The authors’ Chinese Flagship background and irsthand experience in Professional level Chinese program design, teaching, and research provide for a solid foundation in the creation of this textbook. For instance, the lead author, Dana Scott Bourgerie, served as the founding director of the Chinese Flagship Center at Brigham Young, and is a leading scholar on Professional level Chineselanguage acquisition and pedagogy. The strong academic credentials of the authors ensured the quality of this publication, which directly addresses the needs in the ield. Mastering Chinese through Global Debate is a comprehensive textbook written to improve Chinese-language learners’ proiciency from the Advanced to Superior level and beyond, according to ACTFL guidelines. It comprises six units, featuring the following themes concerning contemporary global issues: (1) environment versus economy, (2) interventionism versus isolationism, (3) wealth redistribution versus self-reliance, (4) opportunity or challenge, (5) security versus freedom, and (6) education versus ield experience. Features 249 Under each theme, a speciic topic is presented with balanced arguments and counterarguments. These topics are (1) the conlict between the government’s competing roles of environmental protection and economic development; (2) the spread of democracy versus respect for sovereignty: Yellow Peril or Sinocentrism; (3) whether economic prosperity is in jeopardy or on target: diferent judgments on China’s wealth gap; (4) free migration: opportunity or challenge from the view of contemporary social changes in China; (5) the dispute between hawks and doves: individual rights and national security; and (6) diploma or experience: speculation on success in the Chinese social context. These topics are drawn from real contemporary issues in China, address primary global concerns from China’s perspectives, and captivate the interest of college-level Chinese-language learners. One outstanding characteristic of these topics is that, although the issues are China and Chinese culture-speciic, they are presented as part of a contemporary global discussion and are examined under the microscope of transborder globalization. Regarding organizational structure, each unit comprises eight main sections. Each section contains a series of tasks and exercises. All sections are carefully designed and represent a sequential scafold for the students to enlist in their study. Every unit starts with a section called “Pre-reading Activities,” which serves as an instructional warm-up for the unit. The tasks and exercises introduce the central issue to be discussed, provide background information for the topic, and furnish necessary language and cultural notes. The activity “Creating Mind Maps” is designed to brainstorm thematically associated words and organize key concepts around the topic. A discussion activity follows to give students an opportunity to organize the activated background knowledge and prepare for the next section. Following the pre-activity is the central section of each unit, titled “Study in the Topic.” This section contains a main reading passage featuring the signature topic. According to the textbook’s preface, the articles in the book are written by native Chinese news correspondents without simpliication and thus faithfully relect authentic Chinese writing styles and ways of thinking (p. xi). Each article is structured to present a systematic introduction to the issue with rich references to supporting evidence, facts, and data, and is followed by a balanced number of arguments and counterarguments for the issue. Following the reading is a set of multiple choice or true/false questions for comprehension check. Domain-speciic vocabulary and discourse organization are the major linguistic challenges for Professional and Superior level language and texts. To address these particular proiciency requirements, the textbook devotes two major sections ater the reading section to vocabulary building and discourse training. The “Mastering Vocabulary” section summarizes the key thematic words appearing in the main reading passage under their corresponding collocated contexts. Various exercises are designed to build the skill of identifying lexical meaning from context and to enhance the awareness of semantic relationships 250 China Review International: Vol. 21, Nos. 3 & 4, 2014 among associated words. One innovative exercise for vocabulary expansion in this section asks students to ind collocated phrases for new words using the online search engines provided by the Peking University Modern Chinese Corpus or the Academia Sinica Balanced Corpus of Modern Chinese in Taiwan. This exercise not only teaches vocabulary usage through collocation but imparts an important strategy for inding meanings on their own as autonomous advanced Chinese learners. Following the corpus-based vocabulary expansion, there is a section of exercises for lexical meaning exploration, which contains lexical notes, extended collocations, and new sentence reproduction based on identiied word collocations. Chinese idioms and idiomatic expressions are also introduced and practiced in context in this portion of the exercise. Constructing a critical discourse is the key to developing an efective argument in debate. A series of sections across the six units are dedicated to explicit instructions and step-by-step guidance for discourse construction. Three exercises are featured in this section. The irst one is a tutorial on discourse strategies. In the tutorials, recognizing metaphors (unit 1) and euphemisms (unit 2), understanding inferences (units 3 and 5), detecting bias (unit 4), and avoiding logical fallacies (unit 6) are sequentially introduced using concrete examples throughout the textbook. Following the tutorial are two follow-up exercises. One is an exercise on forming hypotheses with a new prompt; the other is a role-play debate regarding a given situation. The successive section is “Listening Practice,” in which a voice recording of a mock debate related to the current unit is presented. The debate recording is downloadable from the textbook’s supplementary website. The recording is accompanied by pre-, during, and post-listening activities to facilitate listening comprehension. Following this listening section are two sections for building argumentative skills and writing competence, respectively. The speaking section, titled “The Way to Put Forward Arguments in Speaking” is made up of four focused exercises: (1) implementing rhetorical strategies, (2) getting to know formulaic expressions, (3) dealing with questions, and (4) speaking exercises. The notes section serves as an introduction to featured rhetorical strategies in the textbook. Throughout the textbook, a total of ive strategies, identiied originally by Greek philosophers, are introduced. Each unit focuses on one strategy: the conjecture argument (unit 1), deinition questions (unit 2), cause and consequence questions (unit 3), value questions (unit 4), procedural questions (unit 5), and a comprehensive summary (unit 6). Each strategy is included with its deinition, description, and usage examples. The exercises following the notes ofer students step-by-step practice for the implementation of the strategy. In each unit throughout the textbook, students are assigned the task of writing their own position paper. The purpose of this task is to put argumentative writing skills into practice. The writing section, titled “Organizing Arguments in Writing,” Features 251 comprises three activities: a tutorial, a supplementary reading as a writing model, and a writing assignment where students present their own position. Six tutorials cover the essential techniques of position paper writing. The featured techniques include planning content (unit 1), creating an efective thesis statement (unit 2), outlining an essay (unit 3), writing uniied and cohesive paragraphs (unit 4), formulating introductions and conclusions (unit 5), and revising essays (unit 6). The six tutorials form a series of explicit lectures on argumentative writing techniques. The reading and writing assignments provide students opportunities to identify the techniques used in the writing models and implement these skills in their own writing. The last section in each unit is “Self-assessment.” There are two activities included in this closing section. One is a “Self-evaluation,” which assesses learners’ readiness and motivation in engaging debates on the topic and efort devoted to mastering the unit’s content. A six-point Likert Scale chart is used as a benchmark. The other is a vocabulary recall exercise, which asks students to identify the ten active vocabulary collocations they have learned that felt the most beneicial to them as they debated. Two appendices are attached at the end of this textbook. The irst one is an instruction on how to structure a debate. It introduces the format of parliamentary debate, terms used, roles for debaters, and a signaling method for debaters. This introduction serves as procedural guidance for teachers and students to organize mock debates and practices. The second one is a rubric for writing and speaking to be used by instructors and students to evaluate debate or practice performance. There are four levels of performance in the rubric: fair, good, very good, and excellent. The levels are used to assess content, vocabulary, grammar, structure, and impact. The book design is vital to its instructional and learning objectives. This textbook features a unique layout design aimed at facilitating learning. It uses color photographs, artwork, colored section headings, color-shaded boxes, statistical charts for highlighting and diferentiating various texts, instructions, and practice sections. Major reading passages and writing models are presented in a twocolumn format imitating the original text layout in real Chinese newspapers or magazines. One outstanding feature of this textbook is that it is written entirely in the target language of Chinese and contains absolutely no English. Although one might argue that adding English glossaries for vocabulary or providing English instructions would be beneicial for learners, the presentation of instruction and content exclusively in Chinese helps create a native Chinese learning environment, thus maximizing Chinese exposure and input for learners, and forcing learners to begin to think and respond in the target language rather than through translation. Thus, this unique treatment is pedagogically commendable and philosophically suitable for a textbook at the intended Professional and Superior proiciency levels. 252 China Review International: Vol. 21, Nos. 3 & 4, 2014 To complement the textbook, the publisher maintains a supplementary website that provides MP3 recordings of reading texts and mock debates, with audio transcripts, and additional teacher resources (including an answer key to exercises in the book). In addition to the publisher’s website, the authors have created an authors’ website at http://masteringchinese.byu.edu. This site contains authentic videos of sample debates to supplement the book and to demonstrate the use of argumentative devices and nonverbal cues, teacher resources such as English vocabulary glossaries, and answer keys to exercises. It also maintains an email group/listserver for instructors and learners to form their respective communication groups. Although currently the site is just in its initial stages, it can be expected that with the continual expansion and improvement of content, the site will become a great tool to assist teachers and learners to use this textbook. The Signiicant Contributions to Teaching Chinese at Professional and Superior Levels The publication of this textbook is a signiicant breakthrough in pedagogical innovation, content adaptation, and material development for Professional and Superior level Chinese-language teaching. Chinese is still considered one of the less commonly taught languages, despite its recent rapid development. Teaching Chinese as a second language in the United States has long remained self-contained and slightly aloof from mainstream pedagogical innovation in its pedagogical advance. The exploratory efort demonstrated in this textbook under the most recent method of mastering languages through global debate elevates Chinese to the importance of other critical languages, such as English and Russian. The knowledge gained from teaching Chinese through debate will surely make its own contributions to the mainstream pedagogy movement. Using global issues as a means for developing superior second language ability represents a new direction for content adaptation in teaching critical thinking. The global issues covered in this book provide Chinese-language students with a deeper understanding of how controversial views on the environment, politics, the economy, social security, immigration, and education are afecting individuals, contemporary China, and the world. The background, introduction, and discussions on these issues from China’s perspective enable students to see continuity, connections, and the uniqueness of human experiences from a global standpoint, thus empowering them to engage in philosophical reasoning and dialogue with learners of other critical languages. Under the proiciency descriptions in ILR and ACTFL guidelines, this textbook can be considered as a proiciency-based textbook. It directly addresses proiciency criteria through helping students gain knowledge on content issues, linguistic components, discourse structure, rhetorical strategies, and argumentative logic by forming and conveying personal ideas and opinions. Strategy unitiza- Features 253 tion in language comprehension and production is a speciic requirement for learners at these high proiciency levels. Recent empirical studies have provided evidence showing the efectiveness of adopting explicit instruction in advanced language classrooms (Brown, Bown, and Eggett, 2014). This textbook makes use of research indings to provide explicit instructions on strategies, such as rhetorical discourse strategies and argumentative logic, pointing the way to a more proiciency-based curriculum development in the future. As an ambitious textbook in this ield, it is understandable that the irst edition may have areas in need of improvement and editorial errors in need of correction. In terms of potential improvements, the authors could give more thought to task design and be more speciic on the instructions and procedures for some of the exercises. It is evident that the authors have put a great deal of efort into structuring scafolding tasks to ensure students’ attainment of a wide range of designated proiciency skills. However, perhaps because more attention has been devoted to the global structure design of the tasks, some individual exercises appear to be oversimpliied, potentially making them diicult to follow. For instance, in the section “Understanding the Topic” in each unit, instructions for a listening task featuring the main reading passage is simply stated as “pay attention to the pronunciation of the unfamiliar words in this article.” Exercises of this type are diicult for students to engage in and diicult for teachers to assess learning outcomes. Another example of oversimpliied treatment regards Chinese idioms. In recognition of the importance of Chinese idioms (成语) in Superior level proiciency, an exercise for idioms in each unit has been included. However, the input is limited to a list of only three idioms paired with a single example sentence for each. This is followed by an exercise using the listed idioms to rewrite sentences in addition to an open-ended assignment, such as use the idioms above to talk about China’s environmental issues (unit 1), the widening gap between the rich and poor (unit 3), or the college entrance examinations (unit 6). Considering the complexity of Chinese idioms, more detailed explanations might be necessary to ensure students’ mastery of idiom usage in context. Additional directions could be developed to ensure the smooth completion of some activity tasks. In “Introducing the Issue” on page 1, students are asked to discuss what they know about events based on four pictures. Perhaps more guidance, such as background facts, keywords for an Internet search, and links to web resources about each event could be added to help students locate the necessary information. In “Discussion of Social Phenomena and Opinions” on page 4, students are asked to provide their stance on Beijing’s controversial vehicle use limitation. While the cultural note attempts to outline some arguments, speciic information regarding the vehicle limitation policy is let out. It is a great idea to use an organizational map to facilitate reading and listening comprehension. However, the simple bulleted list format without additional guidance could inadvertently cause learners to stray from the key points. One 254 China Review International: Vol. 21, Nos. 3 & 4, 2014 solution might be to provide a chart with sample bullet points already illed out or making suggested answers available to the students so that they could review their answers in reference to the suggested keys provided by the authors. Although the authors mention in the preface that such teacher resources are available on the supporting website, they cannot be found currently. The debate structure and reasoning strategies featured in this textbook are based on Greek argumentation and the Western tradition; however as a language textbook aiming at developing high proiciency in Chinese, Chinese culturally speciic debate strategies are largely missing. Argumentative structure can be viewed as a surface representation of one’s way of thinking. The Greek argumentative principles clearly relect a Western thinking style. While the Indo-European language community features rational reasoning, the Chinese style is more intuitive and prefers to describe the nature and characteristics of one thing by exploring its relationship with another thing through analogy and exempliication (Xu 2004). Throughout its history China has developed many culturally speciic practices of persuasion. Chen (2005) identiies some of these practices: quoting real-life examples from history or the present to make a case or prove a point, using fabricated stories or things that happen in nature as a way of comparison to the case in question, laying out all related facts for a comparison of strengths and weaknesses of diferent scenarios, using emotional appeal, and using narrative to indirectly prove or elucidate a moral point. Moreover, since morality has been a key element for human communication in Chinese culture, the moral appeal is especially signiicant in making an argument. “Face-saving” is another well-known social principle important to Chinese society; hence it is crucial to use an indirect story to keep a distance between the points made and the person making them during a debate. The persuader can reserve and apply alternate means of argumentation for diferent interpretations or for diferent outcomes. Therefore, for a Chinese textbook aiming at building native-like proiciency, it is important to teach students to recognize culturally appropriate means of communication, to enable them linguistically not only to speak Chinese as if they were speaking in their native tongue following their own thinking style, but also to empower them to function in alignment with Chinese argumentative and cultural norms. Introducing Chinese-speciic principles of persuasion and rhetorical methods in the textbook would promote cross-cultural dialogue and empower learners to be aware of cultural values and speak with culturally appropriate communication at a Chinese native level. In addition, the textbook would beneit from more detailed editorial and proofreading eforts. Some examples of editorial and proofreading issues in this current irst edition include: • Improper formatting (e.g., random paragraph breaks on page 165) • Typographical errors (e.g., page 114, section C: should be 运用 instead of 远用; page 61: should be 对 instead of 最; page 27, section A: under second caption, should be Features 255 欺负 instead of simply 欺; page 5: peach-colored message bubble should be 极端 instead of 极短; page 30: copy-paste of instructions from previous unit (page 4) is not corrected to relect subject of new unit; page 37: repetition of 明朝时候的西洋 是指) • Inconsistent headers (e.g., main reading passage in unit one is correctly headed by 注释; subsequent ive unit reading passages are all incorrectly headed by 附录 and 附目) • Miscellaneous (e.g., diagram color in all self-assessment exercises across six units [such as page 52] do not match instructional task; page 2: instructions ask students to refer to 语言注释一, however, Language Note 1 is not labeled accordingly) Despite these editorial errors, the pedagogical value and educational potential of this textbook is undisputed. It can be expected that feedback from classroom use and the resolution of issues such as those I have drawn attention to will improve successive editions. A thorough review and comprehensive update in the succeeding editions will no doubt enhance the usability and beneits of this publication. In summary, Mastering Chinese through Global Debate is a timely and revolutionary textbook which addresses the long-standing lack of pedagogy and instructional resources at the Professional and Superior levels. It successfully sets a precedent for further integrating content knowledge, critical thinking competence, and high-proiciency skills both in classroom teaching and instructional materials development. This book is a welcome addition to the ield and will have a positive impact on furthering the expansion of program outcomes in higher education from the Intermediate to Superior level and beyond. The themes discussed in this book are important for contemporary China and the world. Not only are they relevant to Chinese learners from diferent backgrounds, they are essential for students to obtain a deeper understanding of Chinese language, culture, and society. The employment of an innovative teaching approach — debate on global issues — brings Chinese-language teaching to the frontier of pedagogical experiment, and enables the ield to make its own unique contributions to second language acquisition in general. Hopefully, this book’s endeavor in utilizing proiciency criteria for material development and task design will inspire more proiciency-based Chinese textbooks to be published in the future. Song Jiang Song Jiang is an assistant professor of Chinese at the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. His area of research includes teaching Chinese as a second language, language program and curriculum development, and theoretical linguistics. REFERENCES Brown, T., J. Bown, and D. L. Eggett. 2014. “Advanced Foreign Language Study through Global Debate.” In T. Brown and J. Bown, eds., To Advanced Proiciency and Beyond, pp. 73–85. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. 256 China Review International: Vol. 21, Nos. 3 & 4, 2014 Chen, L. 2005. “Persuasion in Chinese Culture: A Glimpse of the Ancient Practice in Contrast to the West.” Intercultural Communication Studies 14, no. 1: 28–40. Child, J. R. 1987. “Language Proiciency Levels and the Typology of Texts.” In H. Byrnes and M. Canale, eds., Deining and Developing Proiciency: Guidelines, Implementation, and Concept, pp. 97–106. Lincolnwood, IL: National Textbook Co. Dirgin, J. 2014. “An Overview of the ILR Skill Level Descriptors for Proiciency Test Development and Evaluation.” Paper presented at the Annual Flagship Meeting, UCLA, Los Angeles, California, 2014. https://thelanguagelagship.org/sites/default/iles/Dirgin_Assessment %20Plenary.pdf. Leaver, B. L., and C. Campbell. 2015. “Experience with Higher Levels of Proiciency.” In T. Brown and J. Bown, eds., To Advanced Proiciency and Beyond: Theory and Methods for Developing Superior Second Language Ability, pp. 3–21. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Martin, C. L. 2015. “Introduction: Past Contest, Present Focus, Future Directions: Shiting Focus from Intermediate Skills in Classroom Training to Advanced/Superior and Beyond.” In T. Brown and J. Bown, eds., To Advanced Proiciency and Beyond: Theory and Methods for Developing Superior Second Language Ability, pp. xiii–xxiv. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Xu Tongqiang 徐通锵. 2004. “思维方式与语法研究方法论” (Way of Thinking and Methodology of Grammatical Study). 北京大学学报（哲学社会科学版）(Journal of Peking University, Philosophy and Social Science) 41, no. 1: 45–53.