Teach English in Shigang XiAng - Chongqing

Cultural sensitivityImagine for just a moment that you are a TEFL instructor who is getting ready to teach a classroom full of eager students on the first day of class at a public school in Bangkok, thailand. You have spent copious amounts of hours closely examining the long forgotten intricacies of a language that you have spoken for as long as you can recall. After introductions, you proceed directly into playing a simple warm-up game to make the students comfortable and to facilitate classroom participation. One of the students gets stuck on a basic vocabulary word that you are sure he knows, but just can't retrieve it from the recesses of his mind. ?Go ahead,? you say as he struggles for the answer. ?Come on, you know this one, ? you tell him as his frustration becomes more noticeable. The student then goes blank and stares off into space, and in a strident tone you say, ?Goodness, I know you know this.? As the student fails to respond you walk over to him and in an effort to be encouraging you place both hands around the top-back part of his head, as if to pull his face closer to yours, bend down-looking him straight in eyes, and wearing a playful grin you tell him that his first assignment is to look the elusive vocabulary word up in a dictionary and tell the class the proper translation the following day. At that very moment, all bets are off; because, even though you were simply attempting to kick-start the fumbling student's memory recall and then encourage him when it failed, what you really did was drive a wedge between yourself and the students. This kind of cultural misunderstanding can truly hinder the ability to build the essential foundation of trust and respect between the students and teacher, not to mention, it can take weeks or months to repair. Had this teacher properly researched information on cultural etiquette in the classroom then this situation would not have taken place. The instructor would have been fully aware of the Asian concept of saving face, what the koreans call Kibun, as well as the cultural taboo of touching another person's head. While teaching in a non-native country, whose customs are inherently different from your own, it is imperative that you devote a significant amount of time adequately researching their customs: holidays, traditions, religious beliefs, hang-ups, manner of speaking, background knowledge, and what they consider to be important and interesting. In fact, failure to do so could easily result in all of the prior effort put into fine-tuning your teaching skills and methods in the classroom being entirely in vain. When researching the customs of another country you want to teach in it is equally important to closely examine the different learning styles of that culture. This is imperative, not only to avoid violating cultural taboos, but also to gain a much better understanding of how to construct the most efficient syllabus and lesson plan possible. A really good example of this idea can be exemplified by a story of a science teacher who was asked to teach a classroom of Eskimos the basic forms of matter: solid, liquid, and gas. He lectured for several weeks, unable to penetrate the minds of the indigenous students, and become increasingly frustrated and discouraged. After considering his formal method of teaching the lesson to be somewhat impotent, he then decided to try to do something different. The teacher had all of his students attend one of the village?s steam baths, an event which the Eskimos considered to be a very important social function. After the students had attended the gathering and carefully observed what took place all of the class returned to the classroom and discussed the concept once again. Specifically interesting to the students was what happened to the steam and water when the steam bath door was opened. Needless to say, at that point the ball was rolling and the students were completely engaged because, the lesson now had a purpose that was applicable to their culture. Additionally, the story above displays how the teacher managed to capitalize on the intrinsic intellectual strengths of that particular culture. Even though the minds of everyone in a specific culture may not be identical, they are still likely to share a common ability or skill that can be spotted and used to increase their chances of understanding certain concepts. The Eskimos are known to be very visual learners who possess some of the keenest memories and spacial recall abilities on record. Each culture's cognitive abilities are developed as a blend of ecological demands and traditions both increase their likelihood of flourishing in their environment. One of the explanations for the highly developed visual and spacial skills of the Eskimo is due to living in an environment where the snow covers every square inch of their surroundings. Being a group categorized as hunter -gatherers, they commonly travel long distances from their homes and families to attain food. They are forced by nature to notice unusual shapes in the snow, cuts in the river banks, overturned rocks and other land markers in order to find their way around. Their linguistic system even contains a much more elaborate system of geometrical and spacial distinctions as well as localizers, which require the speaker to note the spacial locations of objects they are speaking about. This is much like the English language and its complexities regarding the tenses. Since we are a culture that is obsessed with time frames, appointments, and deadlines it only makes sense that we would develop a more elaborate way to communicate it, while possessing a broader understanding of the concept . One more thing that will be very helpful to investigate is the cultural understanding of the teacher's and classmate's relationship; doing this will help understand the student's sense of self-identification. For example, many Asian cultures are brought up to value humility and are considered to be collectivists, placing the needs of the group or family ahead of their own. When participating in a classroom activity they may appear to be shy, but instead, they simply do not want to call attention to themselves or diminish the abilities of their classmates. Such a cultural mindset would be considered entirely different than the one a teacher would most likely encounter in most public schools of the west, particularly the united states. In this ever shrinking world we live in it is necessary to not only know the language of the people we intend to communicate with, but also, how that information would be presently most efficiently. Nowhere is this more obvious than in a classroom where the cultural differences can easily become a wedge between the students and teacher. Or if used wisely, it can act as a guide to the backdoor of the minds of those very same students. The information is readily available to all who seek it; what is most imperative is to have the attitude of an accepting, tolerant, and open-minded global citizen. It takes little more than curiosity, respect, and a small dose of humility to attain the essential, yet, easily attainable information found in books, websites, travel guides, and open discourse with experienced travelers. The right attitude and acquired information can assure a classroom that will allow both the students and the teacher to enjoy a rich, diverse, and thriving learning environment.