The Linguistic Features and Instructional Design of “Airport Service” Chinese—Targeting Ground Crews in Japanese Airports

The number of visitors to Japan from the Chinese-speaking regions has grown rapidly. How to improve the Chinese language ability of Japanese airport service personnel for eliminating the language problems of Chinese tourists and enhancing the service quality has become an urgent issue. However, research on Chinese teaching aiming at “Airport Service” purpose is seriously lacking. This study, therefore, focuses on teaching “Airport Service” Chinese in the context of airport counters and flight boarding. Both field observations and questionnaires are adopted to explore the Chinese language features the service personnel use. The target learners in this study are ground crews of airports in Japan. Based on these data, the researcher summarizes 9 instructional strategies for “Airport Service Chinese”, which include: 1. The curriculum should integrate face-to-face and online self-study curriculum. 2. The teaching method mainly focuses on repeated practice and timely correction. 3. Classroom teaching is primarily teacher guidance with various situated learning tasks and exercises. 4. Teaching contents should be prioritized according to the working situations and demands. 5. The teaching materials should present the different Chinese vocabulary and ways of pronunciation across the strait. 6. Terminologies should be classified based on the service process. 7. The ability of using Chinese characters for communication should be cultivated. 8. Listening comprehension and habits for different Chinese accents should be trained. 9. Emphasizing pronunciation training in order to enhance the communication with Chinese passengers. 10. Teachers without prior airport working experiences need to receive training related to airport service.

Keywords

service Chinese language instructional design airport ground crews Japan

source

International Journal of Chinese Language Education; Dec 2018; Issue No. 4; p.25 - 52

Publisher

Department of Chinese Language Studies, The Education University of Hong Kong
Chinese Language Program, Columbia University
Chung Hwa Book Co. (H.K.) Ltd.

Language

Chinese

ISSN

2520-7733 (Print); 2521-4241 (Online)