Knowing and catering to student expectations and challenges

Knox, J. (1999). Culture and language: What do our students need? ThaiTESOL Bulletin, 12(1), 41-51.

The most useful points that I derived from this article for my career are the following.

•    What cultural knowledge do our students need in order to succeed in their goal language experience? (i.e. travelling, passing an oral exam, citizanship) Each goal warrants a different empahsis of the instructed language.

                     - Match your modes of instruction to intended student outcome (which seems basic, but really
                        many teachers do not do this.)

•  What cultural factors will affect your student's learning? (cultural differences in classroom behavior, best classroom practices for to match the student body) This is different for every class. I had a class of  Chinese students who I never thought would like to act things out and do skits, but they were more engaged and more sucessful than some of the Italian classes.

• Infuse lessons with culture when teaching the language and preface this with the explanation that English is an internationally spoken language and certain manners and cultural pieces will vary upon where you are.

(Side note: I really enjoyed the excercize of making the macro and micro native culture lists. )

• It is imprtant to be aware of expectations of your students for classroom cultural before you decide how to manage your class. I have a funny story about this. I was asked to teach a class of adults a conversational class in ESL to a group of predominately South Americans. In South America it is a sign of respect to call someone "teacher" because that is a revered position, which requires education. So I asked the students to raise their hands when they needed my assitance, which was very often. I had such a difficult time with this class becuase instead of raising their hands they would all yell out "teacher" all at once. In my mind calling me teacher I felt was a sign of disrespect, like these people didn't even care to learn my name. The class ultimately could sense the frustration that I was emmitting.The next day I went in with a nice rehearsed speech of how I found them not following my requests of raising  their hands and calling out to be disrespectful. They articulated the cultural difference and I maintained my position of this is what I expect in this class. Ultimately there were more of them than me and the habit of calling out "teacher" from their homes of Venezuela and Columbia were so engrained, that I lost that battle. I knew that they meant no harm and I got over it. In the end I am serving them, so why wouldn't I cater my class to what works for them?