The Performed Culture Approach: Localization Challenges and Opportunities

The Performed Culture Approach (PCA) has undergone development and evolution in the past four decades at the Ohio State University (OSU) under the leadership of Professors Emeritus Galal Walker and Mari Noda. The East Asian language pedagogy program at OSU has produced numerous graduate students who are teaching either Chinese or Japanese at various K-16 educational institutions in the United States and beyond. While the theories and practices of PCA have been consistently adopted for the beginner through advanced levels in the East Asian language programs at OSU, its practitioners at other institutions that lack a PCA instructional environment are faced with various localization challenges. This paper traces the history of the development of PCA and highlights its important contributions to the field of foreign language education. It describes the challenges of applying the PCA theories and practices in non-PCA language programs and offers suggestions on how to overcome these challenges and innovate application of PCA in the era of general artificial intelligence.