Author Description

This book is a unique, bilingual, cross-cultural reader in English and Simplified as well as Traditional Chinese. The text is composed of personal, often humorous, stories followed by innovative as well as more standard exercises to help learners become more proficient in their second language and culture while better understanding their first. The goal of foreign language education according to the (American) Modern Language Association's Ad Hoc Committee on Foreign Languages is to raise translingual and transcultural competence. This is achieved through The Chopsticks-Fork Principle in that familiar events like traveling, the first day at school and birthdays are seen through foreign lenses tinted with good humor. In the process, both Chinese-as-a-Foreign-Language (CFL) and English-as-a-Foreign-Language (ESL) learners can appreciate both the target and native culture. To this end, stories from Cathy Bao Bean s Chinese-American life and book, The Chopsticks-Fork Principle, A Memoir and Manual, are presented in English even as they are interpreted and re-presented in Chinese by Dongdong Chen whose linguistic training and teaching expertise pedagogically enrich the narrative. By revealing the text and context in two languages and cultural settings, the impact of the 5 Cs Communication, Culture, Connections, Comparisons and Communities are at least doubled. Understanding how Cathy Bao Bean learned to talk, analyze, laugh and cry about being bicultural will prepare you, as it did her, to travel in a multicultural world. By acquiring these techniques, it is our hope that you will also learn how to talk, analyze, laugh and cry about your own experiences.