TESL 0100: Unit 1 Reflection - Putting Yourself in Someone Else's Shoes
TESL 0100 Unit 1
Reflection: Putting Yourself in Someone Else’s Shoes
After having taken the last four months off to enjoy the summer, I’ve finally
returned to continue my TESL journey with the University of Manitoba. I must
say, it’s good to be back! This will be the last course I take before I
complete the program, so I’ll be sure to make this one count!
For this week’s reflection, I’d like to go over a concept that Brown and
Lee (2015) discuss in chapter eight of their book “Teaching by Principles”, that is, the concept of "intercultural competence." According to them, intercultural
competence allows people to be “…able to perceive cultures in relationship,
both within and outside a society, and are able to interpret each culture in
the perspective of the other.” (Brown & Lee, 2015, p.167). In addition to
this, they add that such a person is “…someone who has a critical or analytical
understanding of (parts of) their own and other cultures – someone who is conscious
of their own perspective, of the way in which their thinking is culturally
determined, rather than believing that their understanding and perspective is
natural.” (Brown & Lee, 2015, p.167).
This stood out to me because I
think intercultural competence is at the heart of a successful classroom
environment. Whether entering an ESL class in Canada for adult immigrant
students or an evening EFL class in Japan full of young business professionals,
a teacher needs intercultural competence to best reach out to their students. By
being interculturally competent, a teacher can be more sensitive to the needs
of their students, by considering their viewpoint, without holding it up to
their own cultural bias. It requires the teacher to consider the interests,
motives, values, and expectations of each student from their own unique perspective,
and not simply their own. A teacher must accept the fact that there is more
than one way to experience the world!
Without intercultural competence, students and teachers alike can end up
misinterpreting the words and actions of one another, leading to breakdowns in
communication. Of course, this is the last thing you want happening in a
classroom! In some cultures, such as in South Korea, it’s considered impolite
to look superiors directly in the eye. However here in North America, the
opposite is true. A teacher seeing a South Korean student avoid eye contact may
worry that the student is shy, or feeling uncomfortable approaching them, all
the while that very student may simply be wanting to show respect. The teacher
may then misinterpret the student’s actions.
While not specific to the classroom, I had an experience of my own which
for me illustrates how intercultural competence can change the way we interpret
things. When I was in Japan several years ago for the first time, I went out to
eat at a ramen shop. Ramen is a hot noodle dish served in a broth and is often
garnished with meat and vegetables. When I got to this ramen shop, I was
surprised to hear the people around me slurping loudly as they ate. Initially I
thought to myself that they were being sloppy and disruptive, because back in North
America, slurping while eating is poor manners. However, upon asking my
Japanese friends about it, they pointed out that the opposite was true! By
slurping the noodles, you are showing the chef that you are enjoying the ramen,
the idea being that you want to eat the noodles quickly, while they are hot,
because they are just that tasty! By looking at this custom from a different
perspective, I no longer considered this to be odd or rude. In the end I ended
up slurping my noodles too!
With all that said, how does someone become interculturally competent?
For me, I believe it all starts with mindfulness; taking a moment to reconsider
what you perceive and view it in a different way. To put it simply putting
yourself in another person’s shoes; it requires us to learn about others and to
apply that knowledge in the future.
To wrap up this blog post, I’d like to include a link that outlines five
stages to becoming interculturally competent. Guillaume Gevrey, illustrates
each stage with his own experiences living in India. I definitely recommend checking
it out!
Anyway, tune
in next week for my next blog post!
References
H. Brown, H. L.
(2015). Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language
Pedagogy. White Plains, NY: Pearson Education, Inc. .
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