Stepping Out and Walking In: Place-based Experiential Learning in an Atayal Indigenous Community

Abstract

This article presents a place-based teaching technique comprising a field trip embedded within a university study abroad program for learners of Chinese as a second language. Designed to deepen students’ understanding of the lifestyle and cultural practice of an Atayal Indigenous community in Taiwan, the one-day visit positioned learners within the tribe’s physical, cultural, and historical landscape. Students participated in ancestral rituals, practiced traditional survival techniques, crafted artefacts from natural materials, and engaged with culturally situated language use. Drawing on students’ worksheets, observations of their tangible participation, informal feedback, and post-visit interviews, this paper demonstrates the pedagogical value of integrating place-based and experiential learning in CSL contexts. The findings indicate that even a short, pedagogically designed field experience has the potential to extend learning beyond classroom boundaries, fostering embodied language competence, heightened cultural awareness, and environmental and ecological appreciation. Despite linguistic limitations, students effectively interpreted language and cultural practices through contextual cues, gestures, and embodied forms of communication. The results underscore the transformative potential of community-centered, land-based learning, which not only enriches cultural understanding and highlights interconnections among language, environment, and human relationships but also helps learners become more linguistically competent, ethically grounded, environmentally aware, and socially responsible.

DOI