ICC Lessons Reflection Part Three of Three: ‘Native Culture Expectations Meet Target Culture Reality’

ICC Lessons Reflection Part Three of Three: ‘Native Culture Expectations Meet Target Culture Reality’

In contrast to the previous lesson’s more mature approach towards cultural norms and taboos, this takes a more light-hearted, humorous approach by focusing on extreme ethno-cultural defensive reactions or denials when encountering a new foreign culture. As previously established in the set-up post, this class was a middle-school class of mostly intermediate-mid to advanced-mid students, with one novice student sitting in. Additionally, while my other lesson was my own product, this lesson as originally devised is by Sean Makarenko, although my approach, interpretation and learners’ needs probably differed from his. The basic premise is that very entitled tourists travel to foreign countries and complain when things aren’t done the way they’re used to in their homeland. They erroneously and quite arrogantly believe they can bring their native-culture setting with them when they immerse themselves in a foreign-culture environment. A typical complaint on the hand-out, which contains about 30, reads “there were too many Spanish people there. The receptionist spoke Spanish, the food was Spanish. No one told us that there would be so many foreigners.”  It’s bafflingly offensive that someone who chooses to travel to another country would view its natives as “foreigners” and I use this point later to elicit some thoughtful responses from the students. Additionally, it makes one wonder what the point of travelling is for this non-adventurous complainer, who obviously isn’t embracing the unique culture of the host country.  

Anyway, in beginning the lesson, I do some word-association and elicit some words they think of when they hear “vacation.” I put these words on the whiteboard and try to build off of them, although I find many are more to do with expectations of generic sun and fun, and less with culture, so I find myself steering the conversation a bit. Too much, in fact. In an attempt to fill the void of a thoughtful silence, I ramble on with too much teacher-talk, corrective feedback and over-explanations. There’s also a lot of hesitancy and uncertainty in my diction as I try to think of the best way to frame my points and setup the different steps in the exercise. I attempted to split my lesson into three distinct stages of presentation, practice and production, but found my presentation lasts twenty minutes. In having them arrive at the desired answers and insights, I found I pushed them too much. While we did eventually have a fruitful discussion, there were other problems, such as students conversing in Korean when doing pair-work (usually a proficient student explaining something to a less proficient student) and some students speaking too softly to be fully audible on the camera.  While reviewing this problem-riddled setup makes me cringe a little, there are some useful moments, such as helping them to establish the difference between fact and opinion and how opinion-based complaints are influenced by our cultural expectations. We also had a lot of fun when reviewing the insane complaints left by people travelling, and I used that interest as a spring-board for them to reflect on how they would feel if a foreigner told them they were behaving incorrectly in their own country.

(NOTE: From 11:30 to 14:00 it’s mostly students working together and me proctoring and helping along less proficient students, so I would suggest skipping here)

This would eventually lead to a roundtable discussion of their own intercultural experiences, prompted by some of my own typed-up questions (such as “what complaints did you haven when travelling?”, “were these complaints influenced by your culture?”, “were your complaints fact or opinion?” and “what cultural complaints might someone have when travelling to Korea?”) the end-result hopefully having them consider how their own culture seems from a target-culture perspective. Most of the students had travelled or lived overseas, so there were lots to talk about in terms of food, customs and experiences. One girl brought up the fact that salespeople in Canada did not seem friendly enough in comparison to the salespeople in Korea, but she recognized this was more a complaint influenced by her culture than an irrefutable fact. Another girl interestingly brought up the fact that the air smelled differently in New York City, although no one else seemed to notice. To her, the air had an unpleasant odor, but although this school is in the heart of Gangnam, she thinks Seoul air smells clean. She does consider from a foreign-culture’s perspective that if she came to Korea, the air might smell like garlic. The practice stage came to an end as we considered different ways we could prevent cultural misunderstandings (some suggestions were buy a guide-book, do research on internet, make a friend, etc).

(NOTE: Again, a lot of slow moments. Feel free to skip around)

I ended the class with a short production stage where I asked them to volunteer their ideas about how to better understand and anticipate target-cultures when travelling (similar to the last step in practice, except less prompting and assistance from me in the hope they can formulate their own ideas without teacher feedback or interference).

I think overall the class was a successful failure.  On the plus side, the students seemed to enjoy the casual atmosphere of the talk, the funny hand-out and they were pushed to consider other points of view. On the downside, this activity could have been presented in a much more concise, interesting and efficient manner than I did, with less teacher-talk and more building blocks. I should have also prepared some kind of video to show them, perhaps of a pampered tourist complaining in a sun-weathered country, in order to activate their schema and pique their curiosity more. There also existed the uncomfortable fact that a novice EFL student who had never been outside of Korea, was sitting in on the class, and this was not a heterogeneous lesson that could properly cater to her needs, so her partner the most advanced student in the class was constantly prompting her along and translating stuff in Korean during the pair-work. I felt like the novice student was receiving i+100, while the advanced student was receiving i-1, due to the huge gaps in their proficiency levels and my uneasiness about how to tend to her (she was a last minute addition and unexpected).  In conclusion, if I were doing the lesson again, I would approach it differently and find some way to introduce some more interaction, perhaps including elements of a game or providing catagories for different things they would encounter overseas, such as “cuisine,” clothes,” and “customs” from the start.