Cross-cultural experience plays a very important role to the growth of pre-service teachers. This narrative study explored Canadian pre-service teachers’ Chinese language learning and their cross-cultural experiences in China related to participating in a three-month international program between a university in Canada and a university in China. This study focuses on four participants’ Chinese foreign language learning and how their Chinese learning influenced their cross-cultural learning when being immersed in a Chinese language environment. The findings show that the pre-service teachers not only developed a basic level of oral language proficiency, but also developed a higher language tolerance for the learners who are non-native speakers of English. In addition, through learning Chinese, the pre-service teachers learned more about Chinese culture and developed an appreciation of different cultures which helped them develop better perceptions and attitudes toward multicultural education in Canada.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.