EDTL 508-Fall 2015 Cultural Self-Study

Yu-Ti Huang 260574607

A sincere and reflective second language teacherEva Yu-Ti Huang

Forward
With many thanks, I am here to tell the stories and cultural experiences of myself.
Everyone Ive met in my life has contributed to the person I am today.
Growing Environment
I grew up in a little town called Lugang in Taiwan with my loving family. Being a
farmer as well as a carpenter, my father worked hard and showed me what it was to be
responsible and diligent. My mother was an active lady and always moved about in and
out the house doing chores and running errands while taking care of her five children and
doing part-time jobs to fulfill family financial needs. Her efficiency and multitasking
ability were passed down to all her five children due to the childrens admiration of her.
Growing up in such a warm family with devoted parents and caring siblings, I became
confident and courageous in pursuing what I wanted for myself. Being a member of the
majority in Taiwan and receiving Confucian philosophy which had been prevalent for
centuries in my culture, I was familiar with the cultural norms, the festivals, and the
holidays which all went along well with the Chinese history, where my ancestors were
from, and with my familys religious practice-Taoism, the then biggest religion in the
country. I always remembered receiving red envelopes and bathing in the aroma of the
combination of burning incense and the feast in prayer to the Gods and Goddesses during
various festivals and holidays-Chinese New Year in particular. Family reunions, Taoist
rituals, and crop harvests, rice mostly, were linked to my memory of home.
School Life in Taiwan

EDTL 508-Fall 2015 Cultural Self-Study

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The first day of my elementary school was the first day when I heard Chinese
(Mandarin) and knew that I was going to speak this language for the rest of my school
life or I would get a five-dollar fine (NT$5). At that time, the KMT party, which had fled
from China to Taiwan after World War II, imposed Chinese in the education system in
Taiwan, which meant that children were not allowed to speak their first languages at
school. There were twelve languages spoken as a first language in Taiwan. Chinese was
used as the official language after the KMT took over. After two years of dozing in a
foreign language world, I started doing well at school because I finally understood
Chinese. As a child growing up in a farm, I never put too much thought into the
weirdness and unfairness of being forbidden to speak my native Taiwanese. I merely
learned and pursued what was necessary for my life. Obedience to the authority and the
elders was the main request to children in Confucian philosophy.
During summer vacation, other than playing around with my classmates, I
sometimes had a summer job to earn some extra money. People didnt think it was such a
terrible thing that a child that young worked in a factory. I actually had fun with it,
because my classmates and I usually had the same job at the same time. We also went out
to have fun in rice paddies on weekends, and enjoy outdoor cooking a lot. Staying
overnight in each others home, and combing hair in front of a mirror at midnight to see if
we could see our future husbands in the mirror were some of the common activities we
did. The freedom of being in nature gave me desire to stay in a small town whenever I
could.
I was glad I wasnt one of the students whose parents hovered around at school all
the timedropping them off, picking them up, or delivering little things forgotten by

EDTL 508-Fall 2015 Cultural Self-Study

Yu-Ti Huang 260574607

them. I rode a bike to my junior high and dealt with everything at school all by myself.
(The three years of junior high was the same as the secondary one to three in Quebec.)
Even when it came to my future plans, I was totally in charge of my own choices. At the
age of fifteen, I had my first experience of living away from home, moving to a big city,
Taichung, to attend my junior college. (The junior college was the combination of the last
two years of secondary and the whole three years of CEGEP in Quebec.) In Taichung, I
was like a country girl and was interested in anything I saw. I had part time jobs to
support myself. I worked as a waitress, a juice bar counter person, a cram school
assistant, and a retail salesperson just to name a few. Since I was a member of the
majority ethnic group, I was always courageous and able to pursue what I needed. Each
working experience made me more and more independent. Even though I worked a lot, I
still had fun with my classmates. My classmates and I went out for a trip once in a while.
We either went to someones house or visited a famous sightseeing spot on our scooters.
Beyond those exciting activities, my major, Statistics, had let me become a wellorganized person. Lots of math also let me think in a more practical and efficient way.
During my college, the Taiwanese economy grew rapidly and personnel with a
competent knowledge of English were very demanding. I decided to go back to school
after working for many years and having three children. My major in English in Ling
Tung University in Taichung gave me another strong point. By the time I finished my
education in Taiwan, I could speak Taiwanese-the majoritys language, Chinese-the
official language, and English-the international language. Before I moved to Canada with
my Canadian husband, Michael, and our three daughters-Bela, Dale, and Tanya, I had
taught English to children and adults for about seven years.

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Family Life
October 10th in 2001, was one of the happiest days of my life, because I got
married to my husband, Michael. Unlike my lively Taiwanese style engagement party in
my parents home in Taiwan, an easy but memorable wedding ceremony was held in my
parents-in-laws house in Ontario. Following that was my lovely honeymoon at world
famous Niagara Falls and a wonderful cozy wedding party with my new family members
in Canada. In our fourteen years of marriage we have added many new memories to our
collection and during this time our family has grown from two to now being a family of
five. Three girls with three different features and characteristics have brightened the lives
of us. Its very enjoyable to watch our three girls growing every day and developing
trilingual skills-English, Chinese and French.
Michael and I were aware of our distinct cultural backgrounds and thus more
tolerant of the differences between us. Festivals, fairy tales, and different cultural
celebrations from both sides were brought to our family and allowed our children to
enjoy the richness of the cultural heritages and assets from both the West and the East.
Marrying a man from another culture and having children with distinct characteristics not
only expanded my knowledge but also the wisdom of accepting the variations between
cultures and minds of different individuals.
Life in Canada
Michaels job in the only English school in La Tuque brought the whole family to
this Francophone speaking community, which allowed me to learn French in a French
speaking neighborhood as well as to experience the difficulty of being the minority.

EDTL 508-Fall 2015 Cultural Self-Study

Yu-Ti Huang 260574607

During my first few years in La Tuque, I designed my own curriculum, gave myself
homework, and planned my own French learning activities, as I did when I taught
English to others. Although a person without any exposure to French before the age of
thirty, my French improved steadily. The friendship between my Francophone,
Anglophone, and immigrant friends helped me settle down in this foreign town. I also
learned that languages would be the key to better relationships with others. I decided to
make myself fluent in both official languages in Canada.
When all of my children started the public school, I finished my English online
teaching and started taking courses at Concordia, UQTR (Universit du Qubec TroisRivires) and McGill. Being a mature student, an immigrant and an allophone in these
universities shaped by Western philosophy gave me a totally different experience of
school life than the one I had before, and made me notice the privilege that I always had
back in Taiwan. So far, I had acquired the knowledge of linguistics, French, and second
language education, and also adopted new cultural norms and new languages to
communicate and interact with others. These were loads of new experiences within only
five years.
Being a second language teacher
Origin
Although there were political bickering among parties which tried to raise some
ethnical differences in order to win elections, peoples in Taiwan generally lived in
harmony without thinking too much about racial issues. The stability of the nation, the
industriousness of the peoples, and the prevalence of Confucian philosophy, which

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emphasizes self-reflection fostered my courage and confidence to be a teacher even when

I was the minority in a new country. I was also aware that I was a newcomer without
much experience in Canadian public schools. Therefore, I would need to learn more
about the philosophy underpinning the educational system in Canada. McGill has offered
a rich environment for reforming my thoughts and philosophy.
Multi-identity
The differences and the conflicts between what I used to know and what I have
recently learned have raised my awareness of the great variations between different
ethnic groups. The experiences of belief conflicts, identity crisis and the resettlement of
myself in the past five years made me realize that language, culture, identity and power
were interlocked. Right and wrong can be relatively subjective due to which cultural
background is involved. While pursuing several imagined communities (p242, Ortega,
2013) in the concept of community of practice (p 184, Brown, 2014) during my
acquisition of several second languages, my multi-identity formed due to my own
construction in these communities.
Concept
In this multiracial and multicultural society, it seems reasonable to keep learning
restricted to subject matters and for a teacher to help students participate in the learning
contextualized to their own environments. Also, learning a second language is not
merely an articulated or acoustic task. A language is a culture itself. When people learn a
language, they are also learning another culture and how their speakers think and
organize their thoughts. I believe applying the concept of imagined communities and the

EDTL 508-Fall 2015 Cultural Self-Study

Yu-Ti Huang 260574607

communities of practice in the classroom can foster better language learning. Overall,
teachers should not teach but facilitate.

Vision
I am thinking about being a teacher on a reserve or in a small town with many
indigenous children, or with many immigrants with different cultural backgrounds owing
to my love of nature, my own experience of immigration and the courses at McGill,
which have led me to listen to the voices of minority groups. It is challenging to conquer
the language barrier between the minority groups and the majority groups. Hopefully, my
effort in my professional training and my understanding of the people with a status
similar to mine will enlighten and facilitate others learning. I am very happy to attend
the MATL program at McGill, which is giving me a systematic training to be a teacher. I
am looking forward with optimism to my new life with an open mind and with an
understanding of the situations in a multicultural, multiracial and multilinguistic society.

References
Brown, H. D. (2014). Principles of Language Learning and Teaching-6th edition. Pearson
Education, Inc.
Ortega, L. (2009). Understanding second language acquisition. London: Hodder
Education.