Archive for the ‘Teaching Chinese students’ Category

1. German students trying to be cool

2. Japanese students giggling at everything you say, until it just isn’t flattering anymore, however cute they are

3. Chinese students falling asleep, then making you feel guilty when you do the topic of daily routines in the lesson after you told them off about it and you find out how little sleep they get at night

4. Korean students giving you gifts that are nicer than anything your boyfriend or girlfriend has ever given you and so making you feel guilty that you half ignored them because they were neither too loud nor too shy

5. Belgian students being odd in a completely different way to all the other Belgians let alone the other students and throwing you every time

6. Russian students making instant calculations of your financial worth

7. Spanish students complaining about the food (Ha! And a slice of jambon in a dry baguette is a delicacy??)

8. Brazilian students taking the piss out of the one poor Portuguese guy

9. French students just being so damn French

And that’s me out of stereotypes for a bit, and anyway that list of cultural cliches was not at all what I was planning to write when I sat down at this keyboard. So here goes with the first three sensible points on how cultural differences can affect what you do in the classroom :

1. Strictness
People from different cultures might react differently to giving students the answer key to check their own answers, bumping everyone’s score up in a test, being strict about absenses and lateness of the class register, allowing L1, chit chat when groups have finished early etc.

2. Groups and individuality
Students might be embarrassed by it being obvious that they are a higher or lower level than the rest of the class. You might also find that they will prefer to come to a concensus and report back to the class or teacher through a spokesman. This can also affect the use of competitive games and praising people who do well. They also might not want to reveal personal information that makes them stand out from the crowd.

3. Personal hygiene
There might be differences of sensitivity to body odour and the smell of food on the breath, wearing masks when you have a cold, or blowing your nose in public.

And the other 30 points, which are not only serious but also made the cut and made it into the actual articles, can be found in the TEFL.net article pages here:

15 important cultural differences in the EFL classroom

15 more important cultural differences in the EFL classroom

and the same things specific to Japanese students:

15 cultural differences in the Japanese classroom

And while we’re getting a bit of culture:

15 criteria for a good EFL cultural training lesson

15 more criteria for a good EFL cultural training lesson

and last but not least

The 15 most fun cultural training topics

With many of those ideas being available as worksheets on the new TEFLtastic worksheets culture page:

Cultural training worksheets for EFL classes

That enough culture fer yer?

Doesn’t seem to be the season for whale hunting, so the only Japan story in the international news today must be about nationalism I guess- probably connected to school textbooks. Let’s have a little look through the International Herald Tribune, shouldn’t take long…

(more…)

There is a whole lot going on in this recent story about a feud over a foreigners’ cemetery in Seoul, but the thing that struck me most was how nationalism is tied up with almost everything is Korea. There are lots of reasons given for the nationalism in South Korea that often manifests itself as anti-almost-everywhere-ism, but the overwhelming reason for nationalism in any country is that it helps the ruling classes stay in power- just look at how theoretically internationlist communist leaders like Stalin and the present Chinese leadership used and use nationalism to cling onto their positions.

Whatever the country, there seems little you can do as a humble English teacher to tackle feelings of national superiority/ paranoid feelings that other countries are looking down on them/ strange mixed up combination of the two- especially as the school you teach in is unlikely to give you the power to pick the history textbooks they use any time soon. So, is there anything we can do to make our students and other people in the country we live in react to the rest of the world without so much of an attitude?

Here are some ideas:

• A good lesson on cultural assumptions etc. works like a good grammar lesson- they end up asking you for any information or opinions you have on the matter instead of you just sounding off while they think about something else.
• As a representative of foreigners in the country you need to be open to the culture you are in to prove that foreigners can be polite etc. by their standards, but not too open as this could be used as evidence that their way of life is inherently superior so all foreigners get to love it more than their own
• Just like a teacher that is going to teach grammar well, you need to be prepared. This means not only knowing their culture, but knowing your own and other cultures too. For example, if they tell you “In our country we…” you will then be able to say “That’s interesting, in (Thailand) they do the same thing”, and if they say “Why do they do that stupid thing in (China)?” you will be able to explain why.
• Never let a conversation on culture turn into a conversation on history.

Any more ideas? Comments below please:

In a moment of inspiration fueled by low tolerance to the stimulating effects of real British “builders’ tea”, have come up with:

The pairwork magic formula

I have yet to teach a class that wouldn’t do and enjoy pairwork eventually. If the magic formula below doesn’t work, then you do indeed know to give up on working in groups. The magic formula is:

1. Make sure there are props and a game factor so you and they can easily see if they are doing nothing at all
2. Make sure there is a clear winner, e.g. the person who guesses their partner is lying more often, so that they know if they have completed the task successfully
3. Make sure some of the prompts are written in English, so that there is not a possibility of playing the game just in L1, e.g. cards with the answers they have to elicit from their partners written on
4. Try a simple, repetitive use of a grammatical formbut leave part of the form blank for students to add their own ideas if they wish, such as chain of First Conditionals that they have to try and make finish with the sentence ending they have been given
5. Try to give them preparation time before they start speaking sometimes, e.g. get them to write 5 pieces of information about themselves that their partner has to guess the questions for
6. If it is one or two students in the class that ruin their groups all the time by pausing too long etc, do pairwork activities as two teams of twos instead

*Well, actually it started with a comment of mine on http://insights-into-tefl.blogspot.com/, but that fact for some reason got the “classic” (i.e. horribly dated) Hot Chocolate song “It started with a kiss” stuck in my head and I could only get rid of it through the magical use of a meaningless blog title. Ah, relief…

Someone else took their frustration out on the world by choosing rush hour to dive in front of the Tokyo-bound train again this morning. That’s one way of coping with pressure, I guess. It all makes me wonder- any Japanese people ever been so shy about speaking English in class they took the ultimate escape instead? The closest thing I have heard is an urban myth going round at my university that the reason the tower in the campus square was closed to visitors was that two Chinese students had taken a jump off it together, and then there is the classic story of people topping themselves off with a pencil during the exam…

I’ve certainly had Japanese students who seemed stressed enough in the class, starting with “Takeshi” on my first teaching course (CELTA). If you asked him a question he didn’t know but thought he should he would start drilling into the middle of his forehead with a knuckle and grunting, as if he was trying to physically pull the idea out of his head- and which point all the trainee teachers learnt about not putting too much focus on one student and letting the other students help him. Don’t know if he was asked to act up by the trainers to make sure we didn’t forget that important teaching point, but I might try that tactic next time I am a teacher trainer on the CELTA. You could have one student who pretends to have a panic attack everytime a grammar explanation was unclear, one student who falls asleep everytime the teacher drones on for 5 minutes without giving the students a chance to speak etc. etc. It’ll be like the SAS EFL training course. Coming soon!

Immoral? Insensitive? Ungrammatical? Let me know by clicking below:

Great question in my senmongakko (private college) class today: “Teacher, I still don’t understand what Scotland means”

I chose to take that as a geographical and political question rather than a philosophical one (Does anyone really, deep down, understand what Scotland means??).

Not sure I managed to answer the question however you take it, seeing as the student had never heard of my closest examples (The Vatican, Monaco) and pre-handover Okinawa (when it was 100% occupied by the Americans until 1972 rather than 45% occupied it is now) isn’t the best of comparisons. Any metaphors spring to mind?

The issue this brings up is a common lack of Japanese knowledge about the outside world. This is more understandable than the Spanish lack of knowledge about the outside world, seeing as there are 115 million Japanese working for companies of world impact living on an isolated island. It’s also not as bad as the Chinese students I had ten years ago who of all the famous people I could think of to explain job vocabulary had only heard of Bill Clinton, and mainly for his bad taste in women… But the problem does remain, and this particular class will be studying abroad next year and are not going to widen their circle of friends when they meet the statement “I am from Argentina” with a blank stare (about 30% of the class had no idea such a country existed). I’ve mentioned the theoretical friend-losing encounter and we’ve done stuff with maps. Have also done an unintentional Basil Fawlty impression when I found out how little they knew.

Looking for other ideas to try out the next few weeks like getting them to plan a trip round the world (We are going to visit…) and using a worksheet I’ve made up with famous products they have to guess the origin of (Louis Vuitton is French etc- should be a hit!) and will let you know how they go.