5/19/22 Week 5:

Response to:  Affect cultural miscommunication or cross-cultural communication in the TESOL class? 

 

In the class of Brother Ivers (teacher in a BYU Idaho) he explains what is its cultural miscommunication: Miscommunication is rampant between cultures, and it causes a lot of difficulties. Communication is an art that connects people but is very different in each culture. As future English TESOL teachers, is indispensable to be clear about this concept and changed our perception front teaching a second language, it’s don’t only create a lesson plan, we need to know some about the general culture of the world and know more about the basic communication rules of the countries where our students are from.

Well, through our teaching experience we will to understood and learn step by step to overcome the possible challenge in this topic, with the academic training in this course we can have an idea of what is coming, you can imagine innocently offending a student for cross-culture communication or otherwise the teacher feeling embarrassment for don’t understand what is wrong?  There are many possibilities of a situation like that, not only between teacher and students but also between students; I remember a funny experience in my English class (Adult School), as we were Hispanic, we were allowed to speak Spanish during the break, and the majority was from Center America and only one from Brazil and I from Colombia; a classmate from Honduras ask to me, where are you from? Are you living with your family? after of gave my answer, I asked him, and you live with your family too? He said: Yes, and I have a female and three offspring. I was confused and I asked oh! do you live on a farm? No, I live in a house in the town. Well, where do you have the cattle?   I am a mechanic; I don’t have cattle. But you told me, you have a female with offspring. Oh, I am talking about my woman and children. I was surprised, that expression was rude, because in my country female and offspring are used to refer to animals, not people, and is the same in the USA. 

This example of cross-culture is between Center American and South American with the same language.  And we will have students from different countries, cultures, and traditions; of course, this affect and influent the TESOL class, what will do we can do? Personally, complementing this course by reading and watching videos about other cultures, is helping and giving support in our process of achieving connection with our future students.  Also, to create a material with tips from the new culture and language to facilize the students learning.