Editor-in-Chiefs’ Note: With the rapid rise of global language learners interested in pursuing East Asian languages, today’s language classrooms are increasingly diverse, be that in terms of fluency level, learning strategy, learning purpose, and/or cultural background. In light of this diversity, the Columbia Journal of Asia is interested in exploring beyond the textbook and considering how approaches to language teaching have adapted or transformed in response. In particular, the chosen theme, “Storytelling, Cultural Connections, and Historical Threads,” seeks to address how language pedagogy engages with the cultural, personal, practical, and socio-political dimensions in learning an East Asian language. Such a theme elucidates vital yet overlooked questions like: How do language instructors build cultural narratives? What consequences do these narratives have? What responsibilities do instructors hold when teaching learners a language embedded in complex histories and cultures? Rather than providing definitive answers, our goal is to platform a range of perspectives, which in turn can hopefully encourage our audiences to think more critically and intentionally about how we teach and learn language.
“Learning another language is not only learning different words for the same things but learning another way to think about things.” – Flora Lewis, Journalist and Columbia Alumnus (Class of 1942)
Engaging with the quote above, the Columbia Journal of Asia organized an academic panel on the theme “Storytelling, Cultural Connections, and Historical Threads” for teaching Japanese, Korean, and Chinese languages on April 25, 2025. The panel consisted of three esteemed guest speakers: Dr. Fumiko Nazikian, Senior Lecturer in Japanese; Dr. Ji-Young Jung, Senior Lecturer in Korean; and Dr. Lening Liu, Professor in Classical Chinese, and was moderated by Sue Min Park, doctoral student in Applied Linguistics at Teachers College. Each speaker had their own vision grounded in decades of professional experience in language instruction, providing a rich range of voices and perspectives on the panel’s theme.
Panelists’ Perspectives on Language Education
The event started with presentations on teaching philosophy and strategies employed by the panelists for language acquisition. Professor Fumiko Nazikian delivered the opening presentation. Dr. Nazikian joined Columbia University in 2004. She worked as a senior lecturer at Princeton University for 16 years prior to Columbia. She has also taught at the Australian National University, the University of Sydney, and the University of New South Wales. Her research interest is linguistic pragmatics, specializing in discourse analysis as well as in the interface between linguistics and language pedagogy. She provided a reflective account of her own teaching journey throughout the years, counterposing the exhausting audio-lingual exercises of her early days with her current focus on meaningful, life-relevant connection through Communicative Language Teaching (CLT). By referencing examples of her students’ projects, she demonstrated how topics such as food, dance, and festivals can serve as doorways to understanding both others’ and one’s own culture. But most eloquently, she elucidated the importance of understanding “Why?”: Why do you communicate? Why do you learn a new language? And why should what you say matter? Thinking critically about how to answer these questions, she explained, is critical for both language teachers and language learners in order to foster genuine personal connections.
The second presentation was conducted by Professor Ji-Young Jung. Dr. Jung has eighteen years of extensive teaching experience as a foreign language educator, offering instruction at all levels of proficiency in the Korean language. She emphasized the transformative power of language acquisition. She described her work as adopting the Transformative Language and Cultural Learning (TLCL) model, which values holistic and individualized methods by emphasizing not merely grammar but also intercultural awareness, social justice, and identity development. She further discussed how language can be used as a means for cultural empowerment for heritage students, underscoring that nearly 50% of her Korean class consists of heritage students. Her position was cogent that language acquisition is a tool of personal growth and critical awareness, by which students could "read between the lines" and challenge assumptions about themselves, culture, and the language. She advocates for cross-cultural dialogue, one that goes beyond vocabulary and grammar to include shared or conflicting values and worldviews embedded within the language.
In relation to Professor Fumiko’s and Professor Ji-Young’s perspectives, Professor Lening Liu upholds a distinct perspective that emphasizes language fluency. Dr. Liu joined Columbia's faculty in 1995 and received his Ph.D. in 1996. He has written various articles on the history of Chinese conjunctive adverbs, Chinese rhetorical patterns, pedagogy, and creativity of Chinese, just to name a few subjects. In his presentation, he apprised us of Classical Chinese and its relation to universal grammar and cognitive processes. He underscored the importance of the concept of ‘register’ to understand the way we communicate. In linguistics, ‘register’ refers to how language use varies depending on the context, purpose, and audience of communication. The four registers in the Chinese language are speakable, readable, writable, and sayable. According to Professor Liu, we achieve relatively satisfactory results at 1st and 2nd year levels, but the teaching quality at upper levels is not very adequately sufficient. And, concerningly, there is a disconnection among the instructions at these levels. He is of the view that working within the framework of register grammar, we can treat Chinese instruction as teaching different language registers, which can help reduce the learning gaps. He also mentioned the significance of choosing good texts that naturally integrate cultural knowledge into language learning.
Throughout the discussion, there were discussions of storytelling, cultural memory, the social role of language acquisition and language fluency. Overall, the event put together diverse perspectives on how language classrooms can be conceptualized. On one hand, from the perspectives of Professor Fumiko and Professor Ji-Young, they can be viewed as spaces for cultural dialogue, where discussions about cultural identity, social change, and personal experiences are encouraged. On the other hand, as per the view of Professor Liu, they can be regarded as politically neutral environments primarily dedicated to developing language proficiency.
Writer Reflections from a Language Teacher and Teachers College Student
I am a student at Columbia University, Teachers College, pursuing my master’s in curriculum and teaching. Prior to Columbia, I taught German as a foreign language in schools in India for eleven years. As a multilingual individual who speaks English, German, Hindi, and Punjabi, I realize that each language possesses its own narrative, cultural background, and social environment. I believe that the use of several languages allows us to see the world from different points of view, making us a more understanding and compassionate people. Research also shows that learning multiple languages shapes identity, perspective, and intercultural understanding (Kramsch, 2009). According to Grosjean (2010), it opens access to multiple cultures and ways of seeing the world. This access allows us to foster inclusivity, challenge stereotypes, and promote social justice by encouraging culturally responsive dialogue.
The emphasis of Professor Fumiko and Professor Ji-Young on social justice and intercultural competence struck a chord with my own teaching experiences as I am keen on advocating for bi/multilingual education. What resonated with me most was Dr. Jung’s efforts to make connections with heritage students. I come from a multilingual environment; therefore, I value language as a gateway to identity. And this concurs with Garcia et al. (2021), who discuss how bilingual education can serve as a tool for social justice and identity affirmation, especially for students from multilingual and racialized backgrounds.
Building on this, Fumiko Nazikian’s focus on projects that incorporate cultural pieces such as arts, dance, and food reminded me of the cultural elements that I also added to my own pedagogy when I was teaching. These cultural activities are more than entertainment; they are living accounts that hold people's values, traditions, and communal memory. Allowing learners to gain experience from practical work within the real context has also allowed me to plan more context-embedded and engaging learning activities, allowing them to relate more authentically to their language and facilitate intercultural dialogue. It also supported my understanding that language is a cultural storehouse—a valuable repository of stories, beliefs, and histories employed in the protection and transmission of cultural identities from one generation to another.
This experience prompted me to think more critically about the parameters for the selection of appropriate materials for language learning. Dr. Liu's approach of selecting texts that inherently carry cultural knowledge seemed to me an excellent way of incorporating both cultural knowledge and contextual awareness.
Overall, the event offered me unique perspectives on what a language classroom can be and introduced a wide range of strategies to improve language fluency, shared by professors at Columbia University who possess a wealth of knowledge and decades of experience. Therefore, although I am inclined to culturally responsive teaching, going further, I will also take note of register grammar while teaching, to fill in the gaps between upper and lower level language classes. My advice to my early educators and my fellow classmates will also be to strive for a balance between cultural literacy and language proficiency so that a full repertoire of students can be utilized to help them excel. The event inspired me to think about how I might incorporate more culturally situated texts and project work into my multilingual pedagogy. It also challenged me to advocate for more socially conscious and inclusive language curricula, highlighting the value of language education as part of social justice and that language is more than mere words; it is stories, identity, and an entrance to knowing the other and ourselves.
As a multilingual student and educator, I left with a firm reassertion of mission: honor the cultural stories embedded in languages and make room for students to critically and creatively investigate themselves. The discussions during the event fortified my mission to advocate language programs that are integrated, rich in culture, and socially powerful keys to rebuilding education and society.
Discussion Questions
Below are the key questions posed by our moderator, Sue Min Park, for the panel’s discussion segment. Though we did not have the time to address all of the questions during the event, we hope that they can further ignite conversations and enlighten educators and my fellow students on different pathways of language learning.
FUMIKO NAZIKIAN
- Do you think students come into a first-year Japanese course with preconceived ideas of what “Japan” is? How does an approach centering transformative language and cultural learning (TLCL) challenge those ideas?
- How do you balance linguistic rigor with the emotional and cultural depth that storytelling-centered approaches require? How may these approaches change or remain the same across instructional levels of Japanese?
JI-YOUNG JUNG
- You describe language learning as a tool for reconciliation and a form of connection. What role do you see Korean language education playing in that process, particularly in today’s global or even diasporic contexts?
- You note that literacy now plays a more central role than spoken language. In a world where digital communication practices shape students’ daily input, how can Korean language educators leverage these for critical literacy?
LENING LIU:
- Do register-based distinctions in Chinese reflect or interact with cultural or historical dimensions of the language? If so, how do you bring those into the classroom?
- You mentioned a disconnection across instructional levels of Chinese. What strategies have proven effective in bridging the gap between lower- and upper-level curricula?
All Panelists:
- How do you navigate the tension between honoring traditional cultural narratives and encouraging students to critically engage with them or reinterpret them?
- Innovations such as AI, social media, online communities, and internet accessibility have fundamentally changed language education. How has the digital age reshaped how you think about literacy, language input, and student expression in East Asian language classrooms?
- Looking forward, what are the key shifts you believe need to happen in language education to encourage deeper and critical engagement for the next generation of learners?
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References
García, O., Flores, N., Seltzer, K., Wei, L., Otheguy, R., & Rosa, J. (2021). Rejecting abyssal thinking in the language and education of racialized bilinguals: A manifesto. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, 18(3), 203–228. https://doi.org/10.1080/15427587.2021.1935957.
Grosjean, F. (2010). Bilingual: Life and Reality. Harvard University Press.
Kramsch, C. (2009). The Multilingual Subject: What Foreign Language Learners Say about Their Experience and Why It Matters. Oxford University Press.