Co-creating the voice of the local community in a small southeastern city: a generative community-based language learning project

This paper presents the design and key outcomes of an innovative community-based language learning (CBLL) initiative embedded in an advanced Chinese course at a southeastern U.S. university. Responding to shifting sociocultural landscapes and the institution’s commitment to community engagement, the project connected students with members of a local Chinese community to collaboratively document their lived histories, cultural practices, and social realities. Uniquely, the project integrates the proficiency-based orientation of language education with the reciprocal, action-driven ethos of CBLL, positioning communicative performance as both a linguistic goal and a medium for social connection. Guided by a Generative Reciprocity Approach (GRA), learners and community partners co-constructed bilingual digital archives that embody shared authorship and mutual learning. This triadic partnership – linking classroom, university, and community – demonstrates how language education can function as socially engaged practice, merging proficiency development and intercultural competence with civic participation, global awareness, and ethical leadership, while amplifying the voices and lived narratives of underrepresented communities.