Cultural Miscommunication - A wake-up call for Teachers!
Teaching students from the same cultural environment allows teachers to focus on other issues and not worry significantly about cultural differences since students belong to the same culture and share the same language. They all, teachers and learners, interpret and recognize each other's behavior with ease. Even though, there are teaching obstacles, making the learning process exciting and challenging.
Now, let's change the scenario above a little bit and add more thrill to the classroom. Let's have a group of students who belong to different cultures and don't share the same language. They have their way of interpreting the world and each other's behaviors, including the teacher. It is a TESOL classroom! Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages means making different individuals, with different cultural backgrounds, work together to reach the same objective, which is to master the target language.
Some people may think that a TESOL classroom may not be a big deal, thinking it is easy like riding a bike. Except that the bike is on fire, and the ground is on fire, and everything is on fire because you, the teacher, are not sure how to deal with so many differences in the classroom.
All kidding aside, the greatest challenges of a TESOL classroom are to deal with diverse cultures, including the teacher's culture, avoiding misinterpretations, and promote communication in the target language. Yeah, not easy at all. However, we, teachers, can make it absolutely possible if we get to know our students, understand their culture in order to mediate and solve cultural misunderstandings that we are for sure going to face.
As teachers, we have to pay attention to many things, every detail counts. Being observant and reflexive upon students' behavior towards the group and themselves, allows teachers to be aware of potential misunderstandings and determine how to react to them.
Teachers also have to be aware of their own behavior and see how students interpret them. For example, In my culture in Brazil, it's common to talk very close to people. There isn't such thing as personal space. Brazilians like to touch people in a conversation and jump from formality to informality quite faster. This behavior may be considered inappropriate by an Asian student, who is used to a more formal relationship between teacher and students and respect for personal space. Being aware of my cultural traits compared to students' is a significant step towards building an understanding environment.
All of us, teachers and students, should not forget that we have a common objective in a multicultural classroom, which is to communicate in the target language. It's necessary to keep in mind that any behavior patterns that may seem awkward or inappropriate come from individuals utilizing different paradigms and, they have to be enlightened.
I loved it! I love that you are from Brazil too hahah
ReplyDeleteI really liked your post and I think that we always, as teachers must uderstand where our students come from and who they are. This way we will be very succesful.
Juliana, your article is persuading. You point out what we need to be aware of as TESOL teachers. It is good to know about your culture. I enjoy the cultural differences between Brazil and Asia. Thank you so much.
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