Raising Environmental Awareness through Teaching Chinese as a

Second Language at University

Xuc Lin

, Mariana

and Fu Ruomei

Department of Chinese, Bina Nusantara University, Kemanggisan Illir III Number 45, DKI Jakarta, Indonesia

Department of Chinese, Bina Nusantara University, DKI Jakarta, Indonesia

Keywords: Environmental Awareness, Teaching Chinese, Second Language.

Abstract: Due to many environmental issues, the need for increased environmental awareness becomes essential. This

paper aims to raise environmental awareness through teaching Chinese as a second language at university.

The researchers use theme-based language learning and task-based language learning to implement the

teaching process. The research was conducted in a Chinese listening class and History of China at Bina

Nusantara University Chinese department with 66 students with waste management as the learning theme.

Before the teaching process, we use a pre-task questionnaire to measure the students’ environmental

awareness, especially waste management. Later, the researchers introduce the students to some materials

related. The researchers gather feedback after the students complete a writing task that is related to the topic.

The study divided into three sections: the students’ awareness and behavior about waste management, the

students’ reflection, and the students’ suggestion to improve environmental issues. Students are more aware

of environmental issues, particularly on waste management in daily life, aware about their old habits, learn

new knowledge, and their suggestions are everyone must take the lead, become an example for others to

protect the environment in daily life, raising awareness through education and improvement of government’

policy.

1 INTRODUCTION

Due to many environmental issues, the need for

increased environmental awareness becomes

essential. Within the last century, with the rapid

development in industrialization, the increased world

population, and science-technology, we now see the

negative consequences to the earth and the

environment in our daily life. That is why it should be

considered a common problem and responsibility for

all of us worldwide. One of the approaches to increase

people’s awareness is through education (Ningrum &

Herdiansyah, 2018). Learning Environmental

education merely as a subject will not solve the

present problems that the environment faces. There is

a need to incorporate education about the

environment in all aspects of learning (Padmanabhan

et al., 2017). It is an unquestionable fact that the

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education of many disciplines should contribute to

raising environmental awareness.

Some studies showed that many disciplines in

education could develop student towards

environmental awareness. Environmental education

is essential to increase learners awareness and

perceptions of environmental risks such as climate

change (Nkoana, 2020) or how text features are used

in the textbooks to reflect environmental issues and

develop children’s awareness (Curdt-Christiansen,

2020). Some schools provided an environmental

subject or environmental education course, and other

schools promote students’ awareness through other

subjects, for example, language (English). Teaching

literacy in the classroom should integrate

environmental concepts and find a suitable entry

point to combine language learning with the

environmental issue (Yang Yan, 2016). As a result,

the students have environmental knowledge and

590

Lin, X., Mariana, . and Ruomei, F.

Raising Environmental Awareness through Teaching Chinese as a Second Language at University.

DOI: 10.5220/0010755700003112

In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Emerging Issues in Humanity Studies and Social Sciences (ICE-HUMS 2021), pages 590-594

ISBN: 978-989-758-604-0

increase the efficiency of environmental education.

Exploring literary texts on an ecological topic can be

advantageous for language learners to increase

environmental awareness (Mete, 2018). Through text

learning, students can learn a language and get

environmental knowledge through the contents of

text reading (Ramadhan et al., 2019); the use of

environmental topics in language classroom enables

the students to compose better, strengthen the

students’ environmental awareness, and raise their

critical thinking ability to solve the environmental

problems (Setyowati et al., 2020). However, studies

on how it can be implemented in Chinese as a second

language teaching are still limited.

Environmental awareness indicates people’s

understanding and awareness of the environment and

the correlated issues (Ningrum & Herdiansyah, 2018).

Another study showed that students’ knowledge,

attitude, and practices were associated with family,

having parents with moderate academic backgrounds

and held permanent jobs (Barloa et al., 2016).

Furthermore, a study also mentioned that most

respondents with a lower level of education possessed

a moderate knowledge of the impact of improper

waste management than those with higher-level

education (Ramos & Pecajas, 2016). Higher

education, such as colleges and universities, must

prepare graduates from various departments to

protect the environment by holding sustainable

principle. Therefore, the university has the

responsibility to encourage students’ awareness,

attitudes and environmental behavior. (Ningrum &

Herdiansyah, 2018). Hence, this paper aims to raise

environmental awareness through teaching Chinese

as a second language at university.

2 METHODS (AND MATERIALS)

This paper attempt to investigate about do students

know waste management. Do the students inspire

after learning about environmental issue, especially

waste management? Moreover, what suggestion that

students have for improving environmental issues?

This research has used theme-based language

learning and task-based language learning to

implement the teaching process. We have conducted

the teaching in two classes, Chinese listening class

and history of China’s class at Bina Nusantara

University Chinese department with 66 students. We

have chosen waste management as the learning

theme.

Before the teaching process, we have used a pre-

task questionnaire to measure the students’

environmental awareness especially, waste

management.

In the History of China class, the teacher

introduced waste management in ancient China

history briefly, and in the Chinese Listening class,

students listened to audio about waste management,

coded bin, and had to answer the question related to

the topic. Afterwards, students had a task to submit a

writing assignment about their reflections and

suggestions to improve environmental issues.

3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The result divides into three sections, the awareness

and behavior about waste management, the reflection

after learning about waste management, and

suggestion action for improving environmental

issues.

3.1 The Awareness and Behavior of

Waste Management

From the pre-task questionnaire, we can understand

students’ behavior and awareness about waste

management. Students (62%) are aware of keeping

their garbage without trash bin surroundings

regarding habitual behavior towards disposal waste.

They are sometimes also willing to help people to

collect trash (51%). 40% of students sometimes have

the habit of separating waste and, 31 % rarely have

the habit. 40% of students sometimes put the trash

into separation coded bin, and only 25% of students

always throw the trash into separation coded bin.

Almost half of the students (46%) rarely have the

habit of reusing things (clothes or others), and there

are 33% of students sometimes reuse things. Students

think they do not separate the waste because there is

no coded bin available (47%), and they think they do

not have much time to separate it (31%). From these

results, we find out even though most of the students

(62% and 51%) aware that they should throw garbage

properly, but from the habit such as separating waste,

reusing products, it indicates more than half

responses still significantly have a lower concern

about environmental protection. This result consistent

with the statement that university students exhibit a

low commitment towards pro-environmental

behavior despite the facts that they know a lot about

environmental issues (Mkumbachi, 2020) and higher

knowledge and attitude levels inconsistent with the

students’ practice level, which was found relatively

lower (Barloa et al., 2016).

Raising Environmental Awareness through Teaching Chinese as a Second Language at University

591

About the waste management knowledge, the

students learn about waste management from

textbooks, television or magazines (48%) and the

advertisement (46%). The results show that students

(57%) have a basic understanding of waste separation,

and 25% think they clearly understand waste

separation and recycle products. Students most aware

of waste separating are plastic products (53

responses), food waste (37 responses), and paper

products (36 responses). Less than ten responses care

about glass, metal and battery disposal separation.

Based on statistical data, plastic production in

Indonesia reached a higher number in 2012, where

plastic production almost touched 10.2 million tons

(Hidayat et al., 2019). Students’ knowledge and their

attitude toward the plastic waste problems

understanding is higher than other waste issues. The

increasing plastic usage has a direct impact on the

environment. Many efforts applied to overcome the

plastic waste problems. Moreover, the efforts will not

be optimal if people’s awareness of plastic-based

problems is still low (Situmorang et al., 2020). The

knowledge and attitude level of separate waste habits

are consistent with the students’ practice level,

reasonable practice.

Based on the living area and management waste

system, the students (96%) think that the coded bin

help them to separate waste. The students (60%)

mention they live in an environment with the

traditional trash bin; only 18% have a coded trash bin

in their living area, although they want to separate

waste, they could not do it. This result indicates that

there is still an absence of a waste management

system in some areas, providing a sustainable

environment. Related to environmental problems in

Indonesia, they (52 responses) think the citizen lack

of awareness about waste management is the biggest

problem in Indonesia, and 41 responses think that the

citizens do not have trash separation knowledge, 21

responses mention that the government does not have

an apparent regulation and lack of socialization

publicly of waste management. Environmental

awareness concerns play a significant role in

developing a well-informed community about

environmental issues to become responsible citizens

caring for the environment (Mkumbachi, 2020). The

students’ perspective shows that lack of knowledge

induces a lack of awareness and the lack of attitude

that could build community behavior towards a

sustainable environment.

Towards a sustainable environment, 50% of

students consider joining some waste management

activity if they have leisure time.

The student’ essay also shows their responses

about why we should care about the environment,

especially waste management. Without good waste

management, the environment will get polluted, dirty,

and spread disease, and by keeping a clean

environment, our life and health also benefit from it.

The students also state that humans depend on natural

resources to survive; environmental damage will also

damage humans. Human will face natural disaster by

the damaging environment. Earth is the home of all

creatures, which include plants and animals. The

interference of one life component will cause an

imbalance to other components. Therefore, humans

have a greater responsibility to take the lead to protect

the environment, less overexploit the natural

resources.

3.2 The Reflection after Learning

about Waste Management

The students’ essays state various reflection after

attending the class with waste management as a

theme.

Table 1: Students’ learning reflection.

Learning Reflections Number of

res

onses

1. Increase the awareness of

environmental issues

2. Learn new knowledge about

environmental

rotection

3. Changing the old habit 17

4. Give more information to people

to do waste mana

ement

5. Understand and appreciate

ancient China regulation about the

waste management

6. Regulation and law enforcement

to give penalties who violate

environmental protection

The students’ learning reflection about

environmental protection, issues and awareness can

be seen in their essays’ summary. After learning

about waste management, the students start to know

how important the protection towards the

environment, pay more attention to our earth,

consider the future, and acknowledge that protecting

the environment starts from oneself and small things

in daily life. They understand more about recycling

and reuse things, get more insights about

environmental protection in daily life. The students

start to build new habits such as separating waste,

using reuse bag (recycle bag), keep their trash if the

trash can was not available. They also are willing to

ICE-HUMS 2021 - International Conference on Emerging Issues in Humanity Studies and Social Sciences

592

give more information about environmental

protection or waste management to people

surroundings. Everyone has to make changes to live

more sustainably. The more knowledge these students

have about environmental protection, the more they

care about it. Therefore, through the reflections, we

hope that by raising their awareness of environmental

issues, keeping sustainable living is the goal for

everyone from now and in the future.

3.3 Suggestion Action for Improving

Environmental Protection

The students’ essays mentioned some suggestions for

improving environmental protection, as is shown in

table 2.

Table 2: Students’ suggestion for improving environmental

protection.

Suggestion Number of

res

onses

1. Make an example and take the

lead to protect the environment in

dail

life

2.Raising environmental

awareness throu

h education

3. Government strict policy

towards environmental protection

4. Promote to others how to protect

the environment

5. Government do more promotion

and advertisin

throu

h media

6. Using recycle products 4

7. Build a habit to protect the

environment

8. Implement activities of

environmental protection

The students suggest that to improve

environmental protection, that they have to make an

example, take the lead to use cloth bag when they go

out for shopping, reduce using one-time products,

cleaning the trash, do not throw solid waste, liquid

waste, and factory waste to the river, save electricity,

bring own water bottle, reduce or stop using plastic

materials. For raising environmental awareness, they

suggest that family and school need to strengthen

environmental education. Government must have a

strict policy and give a penalty to people who violate

the policy. Government must provide more publicly

coded trash bin, find an innovation to manage city

waste, and do more promotion through social media,

educate people about waste separation.

Some students suggest that we have to use

recycled products, try to make new products from the

trash, and it is prohibited to use a plastic bag at

supermarket or department store. Everyone should try

to build new habits, pay attention to oneself, join

more activities to send more messages and knowledge

to people, give an example to save the earth.

4 CONCLUSIONS

The students were exposed to the rich source content

to develop their higher skills, especially in Chinese.

Besides, it is a positive approach to increase their

awareness of what individuals can do to improve their

daily lives after completing the task. The students

strive to learn about their environment actively and

independently. The students obtain information from

a worldwide range of sources, therefore increasing

their knowledge about the environment.

The students can use Chinese as the target

language to communicate and express their opinions

in written Chinese regarding their reflection and

suggestions after learning about waste management.

They are also more aware of their daily life behavior

toward the environment. The study result shows that

all students agree that without awareness, without pay

attention to oneself behavior and action, the

environmental destruction will continue rapidly.

They try to apply new habits into their daily life, and

the most important to protect environment action is

they have to take the lead and make an example to

people surroundings to improve or create towards a

more sustainable environment.

By blended the language learning and

environmental theme, we hope students bring more

development towards a sustainable community for

now and in the future.

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