Myrrl Byler Archives - 91��Ƶ News

Ten Chinese scholars join 91��Ƶ community to learn teaching techniques and immerse themselves in the English language

Kara Lofton — Tue, 29 Sep 2015 18:26:57 +0000

For the Chinese scholars at 91��Ƶ this semester, witnessing the difference between Chinese and American educational systems has been enlightening.

“In China, students are willing to listen to professors lecture,” says Yan Wang. “Here, there are a lot of group discussions. It is good for creative thinking. Every student has their own idea.”

Hongjuan Tang and other members of the group from China are greeted by President Loren Swartzendruber after Convocation. (Photo by Michael Sheeler)

Wang is one of ten Chinese scholars visiting 91��Ƶ from Sichuan Province as part of a “visiting faculty” program. Eight are sponsored through (MPC), an exchange program that has been thriving in various formats since the early 1980s. The other two are on scholarship from the China Scholarship Council, a competitive, state-funded scholarship fund for research and study abroad.

For 16 years, Mennonite Partners in China has placed English teachers from the United States at Sichuan University of Arts and Science and many other schools. In turn, Sichuan sends visiting scholars to 91��Ƶ. A cross-cultural group from 91��Ƶ, co-led by MPC director , is currently in China (visit their cross-cultural blog).

The was formalized in January 2015. Administrators hope the agreement will facilitate “academic exchanges, scientific research cooperation, and communication between teachers and students.”

Sichuan province is in Southwestern China, a region Wang describes as “developing.” She says English teachers there have little opportunity to study the language in an immersion environment.

Teaching, learning, research

Here at 91��Ƶ for the fall semester, the scholars are working on research projects, perfecting their spoken English, and auditing classes about world literature, writing, and methods of language teaching. Some of the scholars will analyze the teaching techniques they observe in research papers that they will eventually publish on subjects as varied as the difference between the writing of Chinese and native English speakers and differences in American and Chinese teaching methods.

English professor is the on-campus liaison for the visiting faculty, which means, among other activities, he organizes a picnic when the group first arrives and a farewell luncheon at the end of the semester. He also provides an academic orientation, a campus tour, an explanation of the academic schedule and helps the scholars connect with “friendship families” so they have an opportunity to interact with the local community.

The scholars also interact with 91��Ƶ faculty at all university-sponsored faculty events and are often invited into classes to speak. Among those professors who have extended invitations to former and current groups are visual and communication arts professor and English professor . Nursing students have also benefited from visits to their classes.

From left: Hongjuan Tang, Liu Yang, Shuli Chang and Yan Wang. (Photo by Kara Lofton)

“It’s a quite different educational experience,” says Liu Yang of her time so far. One of the biggest challenges “is learning how to manage our time.”

Wang agrees. “In American colleges, the students have to read a lot. In China, the students read, but not as much…there is a lot more out-of-class work here.”

Sabbatical helps busy teachers ‘recharge’

Hongjuan Tang has been teaching English for more than 20 years and, except for a brief visit to the United States for her son’s undergraduate commencement, had never been to an English-speaking country. Shuli Chang, too, visited Canada and Australia for brief periods. Out of the group, these two teachers were the only scholars to have traveled to an English-speaking country in the past. For both teachers, coming to 91��Ƶ not only places them in an English-speaking environment, but also acts as a much needed sabbatical to “recharge” and further develop teaching expertise.

Back home, “I’m working on a nationally-funded research project studying the relationship between environment and children’s language competency in western China,” she said. At 91��Ƶ, she has the time to work on her project and access research resources not available at her home institution.

In part, the lack of research resources may be because of the rapid expansion of Chinese universities. “In the ’80s and ’90s, most universities had 2-4,000 students,” said Byler in a recent email. “With a 10-year expansion, most of these universities have grown to 30- and 40,000 students.”

As a result, class sizes in China are normally large and professors become used to teaching to an exam in order to cope. Poorer provinces, such as Sichuan, don’t have the resources to reform.

“There is a gap in inequality between the big and small universities,” said Yang.

Tang agrees. “This program is a very good thing for the western part of China because it helps with development.”

91��Ƶ and Sichuan University of China sign cooperation agreement

Steve Shenk — Thu, 15 Jan 2015 15:36:46 +0000

91��Ƶ and , located in central China, signed an agreement on Jan. 13, 2015, to “promote academic exchanges, scientific research cooperation, and communication between teachers and students.”

The signing occurred during a one-day visit to the 91��Ƶ campus in Harrisonburg, Virginia, by President Meng Zhaohuai of Sichuan University, accompanied by five other administrators. “It was cold and rainy when we arrived, but now it is sunny,” said Meng through an interpreter at a luncheon for the delegation. “That is a sign of our friendship.”

met with the delegation, signed the agreement and hosted the luncheon, along with two vice-presidents and other university leaders. ( was not present due to previous commitments in other states.)

The two universities do not overtly resemble each other. Sichuan is a public university of 11,000 students in Dazhou, a city of 800,000. 91��Ƶ is a private church-rooted school of 1,800 in Harrisonburg, Va., with a population of 50,000. But the leaders of both institutions emphasized their mutual interest in cultural exchange.

The two schools have been interacting for 16 years through Mennonite Partners in China, which places English teachers at Sichuan University of Arts and Science and many other schools. In turn, Sichuan sends visiting scholars to 91��Ƶ. (A current visiting scholar, Gu Juan, acted as the interpreter for the delegation during the 91��Ƶ visit.) A cross-cultural group from 91��Ƶ will spend some time there later this year.

, formerly known as China Educational Exchange, is sponsored by four international Mennonite organizations. It is headed by Myrrl Byler, who accompanied the Sichuan delegation on its three-day visit to the United States.

Sichuan promotes international interaction by, among other things, forging exchange agreements with universities in six countries. 91��Ƶ’s biggest international program is the requirement that all undergraduate students participate in a cross-cultural experience. Most students do a study-service tour in another country before graduation.

“Sichuan University of Arts and Science is the kind of school we like to relate to,” said Byler. “It is in a more rural area of China and needs help connecting with the outside world.”

While at 91��Ƶ, the Sichuan delegation visited three academic departments – hosted by professor , hosted by director , and hosted by two students who had been in China on an .

“This program is a mixture of the traditional arts and newer media,” said senior Emma King.

The Chinese delegation and their translator and their American hosts then began discussing the use of “newer media” and “digital media” and “social media” and several Chinese phrases. The terminology in communication, media and computer technology keep changing, they agreed, in both English and Chinese.

In addition to President Meng, the Sichuan University representatives were:
• Deng Jie, director of educational administration
• Yu Wengsheng, director of international exchange and cooperation
• Du Songbai, dean, College of Literature and Journalism
• Feng Jin, professor, College of Culture and Communication
• Li Xuemei, dean, College of Foreign Languages

China Cross-Cultural Takes Students Out of Comfort Zones

Andrew Jenner — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 19:22:32 +0000

The 14-hour flight from Washington, D.C., to Beijing was the first time Josh Martin had ever flown. It was also the first time he’d been out of the country, and pretty much the first time he had ever really traveled at all, except for the away games that occasionally took him out of state during his four years as an infielder for the baseball team at 91��Ƶ (91��Ƶ).

And his arrival in the Chinese capital – home to somewhere around 20 million people who speak a language entirely foreign to his own – was the first time the Crozet, Va., native had been to a big city.

“That as a really big eye-opener for me,” Martin says. “I really had no clue what to expect.”

He certainly wasn’t alone. Trip leader Myrrl Byler estimates that about one-third of the last 91��Ƶ group he led to China was flying for the first time, and the experience often represents students’ first time outside the United States. Byler, director of the program (a partnership between several church mission boards and , a relief and development non-profit), has led three-week cross-cultural study trips to China every May since 2004. In 2012, math professor was the faculty co-leader of the trip.

Valerie Burton Moore (center) and four other 91��Ƶ students were part of the 2010 China cross-cultural. Photo provided by Myrrl Byler.

The curriculum includes an introduction to written and conversational Chinese, lectures on Chinese culture, tai chi classes, a several-day homestay with a Chinese family, and plenty of interaction with Chinese university students.

After some sightseeing in Beijing, Byler takes the group to a “smaller” Chinese city where they spend the majority of their time. In May 2012, the group went west to Nanchong, a Chinese city populated by around 1 million in Sichuan province. (Nanchong also rates “small” by another metric useful for assessing Chinese cities: it has just one McDonald’s).

With the enormous language and culture barriers, the unfamiliar food and the sometimes overwhelming attention that the group can attract from curious Chinese people with little exposure to foreigners, Byler says the trip forces students far out of their comfort zones. The homestay in particular, he says, can cause particular anxiety, although many of the students end up looking back on the experience as one of the highlights of the trip.

“You had to build patience,” says Valerie Burton ’10 Moore, who went on the China cross-cultural in the summer of 2010. “You just had to relax.”

New food experiences were among the things that placed demands on Moore’s patience and, ultimately, widened her horizons. These included all kinds of seafood, noodles for breakfast, unusual (from her American perspective) preparations of chicken, pork, duck and lamb, unfamiliar vegetables and dishes so spicy her nose broke out in a sweat. While she likely wouldn’t have tried these foods if the decision had been up to her, Moore eventually came around, and after returning home, resisted eating American “Chinese” food for more than a year – not wanting to tarnish the memory of the actual, real Chinese food she’d come to enjoy.

91��Ƶ students were often the subject of curiosity, signing autographs and having their picture taken. (Front, left to right: Samantha Wenger and Kamron Johnson). Photo provided by Myrrl Byler.

Moore, a four-year member of the 91��Ƶ soccer team, also says the attention she and the other students received from Chinese people took some getting used to.

“They almost treated us like celebrities,” she says. “They were gawking all the time.”

The American students’ height was often an object of great interest, as were those with blonde or red hair. 91��Ƶ senior Jennifer Blankenship, who went on the 2012 China cross-cultural, recalls Chinese people often crowding around members of her group, asking for autographs, or even pushing babies into the students’ arms for photo ops.

“Everybody wanted pictures with us wherever we went,” says Blankenship, a four-year member of the 91��Ƶ basketball team.

At least one basketball or volleyball game is usually on the agenda during the group’s visits to Chinese high schools and universities – often the Chinese school’s varsity team versus an ad-hoc team of cross-cultural students – as when Blankenship and a few other students played basketball against a Chinese team in Nanchong. Blankenship says the court was surrounded by hundreds of fans – more than typically attend her games at 91��Ƶ – and the atmosphere was electric.

“When I made a good pass or basket, everyone went crazy,” she says.

91��Ƶ students participated in an ad hoc basketball game. (Back row, left to right: Tabitha Bowman, Josh Martin, Jennifer Blankenship, Julia Kern, Stefan Baughman). Photo provided by Myrrl Byler.

The attention wasn’t all positive, however. Dirty looks from men sometimes made female students feel uncomfortable, and Blankenship says some vendors tried to take advantage of the students’ naïveté by ripping them off. Blankenship, who is white, says the experience gave her insight into how minorities in the United States might feel when they are subject to discrimination based on skin color or unfamiliarity with American culture.

Blankenship, Moore and Martin all say one reason they chose the China cross-cultural was because it happens during the summer, when it didn’t interfere with their sports schedules. (Numerous athletes have been on Byler’s five summer cross-culturals to China, although he is now planning a semester-long trip for the fall of 2013, to be co-led with math professor .)

In almost all cases, Byler says, his students have arrived back home with new appreciation for travel and interaction with unfamiliar people and places, after being stretched out of their comfort zones by the trip.

Though he discovered he has a strong anxiety about flying, Martin said he “definitely wants to travel abroad again.”

Martin graduated from 91��Ƶ after the cross-cultural, and is now working in Harrisonburg. He will start a baseball-coaching job next spring at his alma mater, Western Albemarle High School outside Charlottesville, Va.

Blankenship returned home equally enthusiastic about the experience.

“I want to go back,” she says. “I have to take my future spouse. I want to share that. I can’t imagine only going that one time.”

Myrrl Byler Archives - 91����Ƶ News