So I recently finished up a semester at the university. Remember that American history EAP class roleplay I wrote about? And the American history essay questions?
Anyway, according to the university curve the top 5 students get A or lower. 6-12 get B or lower, 13-19 get C or lower, 20-23 get D or lower. I gave the maximum number os As, the maximum number of Bs, etc. So far I've gotten three complaints, all from students who haven't done a single homework assignment this semester. One of them copied her entire final essay from web sites (but was kind enough to tell me which ones).
What really annoys me is not that students want better grades but that students think I can give them. They know about the univeristy curve.
I recently wrote about cultural misundersatnding & teaching EFL. Today I continue along similar lines.
Hall (2002) writes that people learn how to perform social tasks, which are part of daily living through “time and experience in our activities with the more experienced members” (p.49). Now part of performing a social task is using language, and language teachers are always trying to help learners develop linguistic resources. Less clear, however, is how to help learners develop cultural knowledge.
Perhaps some people feel that the only way to learn culture is through interacting with “experienced members” of a culture. However, it seems that there must be something we can do in the classroom to help learners with the cultural knowledge they need to fully understand the language they are learning in class.
Then with English there is the question of what culture to teach. Many people of the world learn English as a non-native language. My EFL students in Korea may be learning English to interact with Americans, or Japanese people, both, or neither. Must English learners know sociocultural norms from every culture? This is probably impossible, although I imagine that it would be very fun to try. I have been considering proposing a new course at my university, in which students would learn English through studying other cultures. It would be a CBI course with cultural content.
Another possibility is to take a normal conversation course and bring up the subject of cultural differences. As I write in my essay for my sociolinguistics class, Romaine (2000) says:
Some English-speaking communities are more likely to give and accept compliments than others. Either of these differences could cause an uncomfortable situation, because, as Nishida (1999) points out, situations that don’t make sense to a person’s PSI schema lead to stress. (Trotta, 2004)
This reminds me of a problem I often have: my students telling me how handsome I am. In an American classroom, it is pretty rare for college students to tell the professor how attractive s/he is. It happens to me in Korea all the time. Perhaps a way to reduce my own stress and help students realize that having the language to say something doesn’t make it an appropriate thing to say would be to discuss the differences between how Korean teachers and Western teachers are treated. I honestly don’t know if Korean teachers receive compliments about their physical appearance. Do learners do it because it is acceptable in their culture? Or do they do it because they think it is acceptable in my culture?
Hall, J.K. (2002). Teaching and Researching Language and Culture. London:
Longman.
Nishida, H. (1999). A cognitive approach to intercultural communication based on schema theory. International Journal of Intercultural Relations 23 (5), 753-777.
Romaine, S. (2000). Language in Society (2nd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.
The theory is at the beginning. The lesson idea is at the end.
Nishida (1999) cites Gudykunst who stated that:
Effective (intercultural) communication is moderated by our ability to mindfully manage our anxiety and reduce our uncertainty about ourselves and the people with whom we are communicating. (1993, p.38).
(a) Interactants in intercultural communication may not share the PSI schemas of each other's cultures;
(b) uncertainty and anxiety may be the resultant psychological states when strangers (both sojourners and immigrants) do not have appropriate schemas of the host culture; and
(c) information-seeking behavior of strangers is not limited to gaining data about the other interactant, but can be found in the situations where they try to acquire the PSI schemas of the host culture... (p.769).
Another movie involving Japan is Japanese Story about an Australian geologist and a Japanese business person; their cultural misunderstandings impede romance for a time but are overcome (at least until it is revealed that the business person is married). Books and articles are an even richer source of information. "Conversational Ball Games" in Select Readings is a chapter about cultural issues involved in participating in conversation and my students always find discussing differences between Eastern and Western style conversations interesting.
A relevant web site is www2.andrews.edu/~tidwell/pubs/culture.htm which includes an intersting story:
An American friend of mine lived for many years in the Philippines before moving to Japan. When he returned to the Philippines for a visit, a close friend remarked that he had become cold and unfriendly. Why? When he greeted his Filipino friends, he briefly bowed and then shook hands, in keeping with the customs of Japan. But they expected him to embrace them and chat with his arm around their shoulders, as was customary in their culture. Since he didn't, he was labeled as unfriendly!
In conclusion, by showing learners how cultural misunderstandings arise and how they can be dealt with, teachers prepare students to use English as an international language.
Kim, J. (2002). Teaching Culture in the English as a Foreign Language Classroom. The Korea TESOL Journal (5) 1. 27-39.
Nishida, H. (1999). A cognitive approach to intercultural communication based on schema theory. International Journal of Intercultural Relations 23 (5), 753-777.
As facilitator of the KOTESOL CALL SIG, I've been trying to gather some interest in our group from other teachers in Korea. A symposium seemed like a good way to get some free publicity, so I've been speaking with the KOTESOL conference organizers and memebers of the SIG about organiziing a CALL symposium during the international conference in October.
I even have an idea: CALL in context. Panel members would discuss how they've used CALL to help their classes and then audience members could describe their specific situations while panel members tried to offer some insight into how CALL might fit into each situation. There is one major problem; I've never organized a symposium before. I suppose each panel member needs to submit a paper, but how long should each paper be? How long should the symposium be? How many people should be on the panel?
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Since my classes are just about over, I've been thinking "how can I help my students remember/use all the language we've studied?" I came up with this present perfect, past perfect, past pregressive review. Please tell me what you think!
Last year I had an upper intermediate student who had some trouble with pronunciation. When I spoke ot her about the areas I thought she could improve by mimicing sounds on her own, I learned that I was wrong. She said that she couldn't improve with just a bit more practice because she was partially deaf. I had (still have) no idea how to help someone who can't hear certain sounds produce those sounds.
I bring it up because today I interviewed a student for placement in our university's summer program. He was in a wheelchair and I guess he had some sort of disability because his pronunciation was really difficult to understand. He understood the interview questions but there were several breakdowns. At one point he had to spell out "L-A-W" so that I could understand he was a law major. One of our teachers will have to understand him and help him make other students understand him. How do we do either of those things?
A good start might be to find out where the pronunciation issues come from. Is he partially deaf like my former student? Does he have less than average control of the muscles needed for speech?
Should he be in a high class where he may have a better chance of being understood? A low level class where the students have difficulty producing language (although for different reasons)?