6/3/20; Week 7: Response to Culture and Psychology Video

In his lecture on culture and psychology, Brother Ivers discusses the concept of the culturally created ought self. (See his lecture here: https://video.byui.edu/media/06+Culture+and+Psychology/0_s4h3d6bc.) This term refers to the cultural expectation of what we as a person should be, what we ought to be, essentially. For me, the ought self I envision is a product of American culture and American Mormon culture. Brother Ivers explains that when our real self (who we actually are) differs from the culturally created ought self we envision, often our self-esteem suffers as a result. Although I’ve come a long way in combatting that tendency in my own mind, I’ve definitely seen that happen, both to me and people I care about. For example, as a 32-year-old American Mormon woman, sometimes I feel bad about the fact that I am not yet married and have no children, because that’s what American Mormon culture tells me the ought self is for a 32-year-old American Mormon woman. I have other single friends who feel the same way.

It's difficult, but necessary, for us to examine the ought selves our culture creates for us. We need to critically think about these ought selves, and leave behind those which don’t actually make sense. Our self-esteem shouldn’t suffer because of irrational, illogical, culturally created ought selves. We need to make peace with our real selves and realize that who we really are is good enough.

As a future TESOL teacher, being aware of this concept of ought selves and real selves will help me better understand and better help my students. Being aware of this concept, I can better understand the pressures my students face, both from their native culture and their new culture in America. This will help me more accurately interpret their behaviors and feelings. Because I understand my students better, I am better prepared to help them deal with these pressures. If their self-esteem is suffering because of differences between their ought selves and real selves, I will be better prepared to (hopefully!) help them see things more clearly, evaluate themselves more clearly, and build up their self-esteem. Self-esteem is so important in the classroom; without it, students will fail to learn because they won’t believe in themselves. But the more I am aware of the pressures they face, the better I can hopefully help them deal with those pressures, cope, and continue forward in their language learning journey.

6/1/20; Week 7: Response to Differences in Manners Video and Reading

Most of my international travel experiences have been to different places in Europe, and although there are definitely many cultural differences between the U.S. and various European countries, and differences between the various European countries themselves, there are also a lot of similarities. The website “13 Examples of Good and Bad Manners Around the World” (https://people.howstuffworks.com/13-examples-of-good-and-bad-manners-around-the-world.htm#page=0) pointed out a couple of the differences between U.S. manners and European manners – for example, chewing gum is considered vulgar in France, Switzerland, and Luxembourg – but the bigger differences in manners seem to be between the U.S. and Asia, or the U.S. and the Middle East. So I’ve missed out on a lot of the larger differences in manners that exist in foreign countries, since most of my travels have been in Europe.

What this website, along with Brother Ivers’s lecture on differences in manners around the world (see his lecture here: https://video.byui.edu/media/06+Difference+in+Manners/0_xc0a34gb), made abundantly clear to me was just how many cultural differences exist. It seems that for almost every small custom you can think of, there will be somewhere in the world that does it differently. It definitely makes me want to be more aware of potential differences in manners when I travel places – I’ll certainly be doing more research before travelling in the future!

The sheer number of tiny differences in cultures makes the prospect of actually living in a foreign country daunting, but that is what my future ESL students in the United States will be doing – learning to live in a foreign country. And to do it successfully, they may sometimes need someone to point out differences in manners they may have not picked up on yet. As their ESL teacher, I am in a prime position to notice differences in manners, and to point them out to my students when they arise. I believe doing so is an important part of being an ESL teacher. It’s not just about teaching the language. I need to help my students understand the culture of America as well if they are to be successful in their new home.

6/1/20; Week 7: Response to Cross-Cultural Students in the Classroom Video

In Brother Ivers’s lecture about cross-cultural students in the American classroom (watch his lecture here: https://video.byui.edu/media/06+Cross-Cultural+Students+in+the+Classroom/0_r2lcaswt), he pointed out that when we have students who come from different cultures than we do, if their behavior ever strikes us as disrespectful or disruptive or odd in some way, we should never jump to conclusions. Chances are, their behavior is the result of them having different cultural paradigms than us, so to them, their behavior wasn’t disrespectful or disruptive at all!

As a future TESOL teacher, this concept is of crucial importance, since all of my students will be from different cultures than I am. I must keep an open mind, and not judge my students by my personal cultural paradigms, understanding that theirs are different than mine.

I don’t think this means that I should let any and all behavior be allowed in my classroom, though. If I did that, I think it would be different to foster a cohesive and functional learning environment. There do need to be classroom rules and standards. But when a student does something that seems inappropriate, rather than assuming that the student is misbehaving, my automatic assumption ought to be that their behavior stems from a different cultural paradigm. Then, if the behavior is something that is truly inappropriate in American culture, I should use the moment as a teaching opportunity. Instead of judging them for “misbehaving,” I should teach them what constitutes appropriate behavior in America, the country they are trying to live in now, to help them start to fit in better in their new home.

To me, this is the implication of Brother Ivers’s advice not to judge the behavior of people from other cultures: I should give them the benefit of the doubt, but I shouldn’t necessarily allow any behavior in my classroom. I should teach them the cultural norms of their new home, so that they can succeed living in America.

5/29/20; Week 6: Response to Attributional Tendencies Video and Readings

I had never heard of the concept of attributional tendencies before listening to Brother Ivers’s lecture on it (watch his lecture here: https://video.byui.edu/media/05+Attributional+Tendencies+in+ Cultures/0_u45682wd). I think it’s very interesting that we have such broad cultural tendencies in individualistic cultures to attribute our own personal successes internally and our personal failures externally, but that we do the opposite for other people, and attribute their successes externally and their failures internally. On the other hand, collectivistic cultures tend to do the opposite.

If in the future I have students from collectivistic cultures (which seems likely, given that ¾ of the world is collectivistic), it will be useful to understand their attributional tendencies, especially given that they will be the opposite of my own attributional tendencies. In particular, it will be useful to know that students from collectivistic cultures tend to attribute their failures internally. If I have a student from a collectivistic culture who is struggling with something in class, I will need to be particularly attentive to their level of discouragement, I think. If they are attributing their “failure” to grasp a concept internally, they could get discouraged easily, which will only make it harder for them to learn. If I notice this happening, I think it could be helpful to talk to them and try to help them see that their struggles aren’t necessarily their own fault, and that they are capable of learning the material (and I firmly believe they are).

Brother Ivers mentioned that we shouldn’t use our cultural attributional tendencies to decide our realities for us. Helping my students see and combat their own irrational tendencies – like blaming themselves for their failures – is one way I can help my students in their quest to learn English. I think being aware of my own tendencies will be helpful as well, especially the fundamental attribution error, where we attribute other people’s failures internally. I can’t help my students not blame themselves if I am blaming them too!

5/28/20; Week 6: Response to Personal Space Videos and Readings

My culture (American) tends to prefer more personal space than a lot of other cultures. On my mission in Italy, I observed this often. People would frequently stand too close, or try to greet me by kissing me on the cheeks, and to me that felt like an invasion of my personal space, at least at first. Eventually, I got used to it, and I adjusted to the different cultural expectations. Then I went home from my mission, and I got readjusted to American personal space expectations. Last year I went back to Italy, and was surprised at being bothered again when people invaded my personal space. I think it’s interesting that we can adjust to different levels of personal space expected in other cultures, but in the end what comes most naturally is still what we were raised to expect.

In my future TESOL classroom, I could see issues of personal space causing problems. I think the most likely problem could be my students standing closer to me than seems comfortable, since it seems likely whatever culture they’re from would have smaller personal space bubbles than I will have, but it’s also possible I could have two students from different cultures that expect different personal space zones, and that could cause conflict between my students. If the problem is just a student standing closer to me than I find comfortable, I think I’ll be likely to deal with it in one of two ways: either I’ll just acknowledge to myself that this is an issue of cultural difference, and I’ll just adjust mentally; or I’ll say something if I think it’s something the student needs to know to successfully integrate into American culture. Which option I choose I think will be based on just how close they are standing. If it’s a minor invasion, I’ll probably just mentally adjust, but if it’s a major invasion and I know they will make other people in America uncomfortable, and not just me, I will tell them so they can successfully integrate into American culture.

One other thing I should keep an eye on in the TESOL classroom is class size vs. class space. Based on the reading, it sounds like people tend to be more tense when their personal space is invaded for long periods of time. If I work somewhere where the classroom is smaller, and there are too many people, it could cause a tense environment if students feel their personal space is invaded the whole time they are in class. Obviously, that would be a less-than-ideal learning environment, so I should keep an eye out for that. I think if this happens, one solution I could implement would be to help my students get to know each other better as quickly as possible, because people’s personal space bubbles decrease around people they’re comfortable with.

Being aware of personal space issues will definitely be useful to me as a TESOL teacher.

5/27/20; Week 6: Response to Individualistic vs. Collectivistic Readings and Videos

Nearly ¾ of the world is collectivistic, not individualistic. This means, as an ESL teacher, even an ESL teacher in an individualistic country (the U.S.), I will likely have many students from collectivistic cultures. Thus, understanding collectivism and how it differs from the individualistic cultural values I was raised with will be important for me as an ESL teacher.

I plan to teach adults. If my students are from collectivistic cultures (which is likely), they will have different values, different motivations for learning, different demands on their time, and even different concepts of personal identity than I have, as someone from an individualistic culture. If I want to understand my students, I need to recognize these cultural differences and be aware of them.

For example, a collectivistic student’s motivation for learning English could have more to do with his/her role in his/her social group (most likely the family) than with his/her personal desires and goals. Recognizing this can help me plan lessons that will appeal more directly to students with collectivistic motivations and reasons for learning English. Knowing their cultural values can help me teach them what they most want and need to know to accomplish their language goals, which may be different than the language goals of individualistic students.

Like with the other sorts of cultural differences we’ve looked at in this class (monochronic vs. polychronic, emotional expressivity, etc.), I think the biggest thing for me to do is just be aware of these cultural differences, so that when my students say or do something that seems strange to me, I don’t ascribe to them the same motivations I have. I have to look at the motivations they have coming from a different (in this case collectivistic) culture. Being aware of cultural differences can help me more fully understand and serve my students.

5/25/20; Week 6: Response to "Differences in Emotional Expressivity" Video

Different cultures have different levels of emotional expressivity in public. I saw this first-hand on my mission in Italy. I had never attended a ward council meeting before my mission, so my first ward council meeting was in Italy, and it was an astonishing process. The bishop would bring up a topic, and then everyone would start shouting at once, gesticulating wildly and yelling over each other to try and make their point. After listening for a while, the bishop would finally cut everyone off (usually by yelling loudest of all) and announce his decision emphatically. Then he’d throw out a new topic and the process would start all over again. The level of emotional expressivity in those meetings (and in every other situation) in Italy was very high. After my mission, I had a calling that required me to attend ward council in my home country (the U.S.), and the dramatic differences between a ward council meeting in Italy and a ward council meeting in the U.S. were astounding. In the U.S., there was no yelling, no gesticulating, no talking over each other, no fighting. Everyone calmly and politely said what they had to say, going out of their way to do so as respectfully as possible.

I think that if an Italian were in an American ward council meeting, they would be likely to end up speaking over people at times, and I think Americans would misinterpret that as rudeness. To them, the Italian would seem uncivilized and impolite. At the same time, I expect the Italian would probably be confused as well – he would see the Americans as cold and uncaring, perhaps.

This type of cultural misunderstanding caused by different levels of emotional expressivity is something I’ll need to watch out for in my ESL classes. If my students are from different cultures, I’ll need to find ways to moderate any misunderstandings that may arise from one student being more expressive than another because of their native cultures. I also will need to be aware of my own level of expressivity (which is definitely low), and keep that in mind when deciphering the behavioral patterns of my more expressive students.

5/22/20; Week 5: Response to Cultural Miscommunications Videos

It is clear from the two videos we watched (Brother Ivers’ lecture on cultural miscommunication and the HSBC commercials) that cultural differences can cause a host of misunderstandings. I experienced this on my mission in Italy. For example, Italians are very passionate and when they talk, they talk with loud voices, lots of hand gestures, and they can sound very intense. Once toward the end of my mission, I was training a new sister missionary from the U.S., and on her first Sunday, she still didn’t speak Italian very well, so she didn’t really understand much of what was said in Relief Society. To me, I had grown accustomed to how Italians spoke, and it felt like a nice, typical Relief Society lesson in Italy, but once we left, she was very worried and asked me seriously what everyone had been arguing about so intensely. I explained to her that they weren’t actually arguing at all – that’s just how Italians talk!

That’s just one example of one cultural misunderstanding I witnessed on my mission, but there were plenty more I saw and experienced, and plenty more that I have seen and experienced in other areas of my life as well. I enjoyed learning in the videos we watched about some of the specific cultural miscommunications that can arise, but I know that I can’t possibly be aware of all cultural miscommunications I could possibly have before I start teaching. So, to me, the more important thing I learned from these videos was the overarching theme that when interacting with people from other cultures, it is important not to make assumptions based on my own cultural paradigms about what their behavior might mean. I need to be aware that when someone does something that seems rude to me, rather than assume they are being rude, I need to look into the matter, ask them why they are behaving that way, and learn more about their cultural paradigms before I judge their behavior.

I also think it’s important that when we see cultural clashes in our classrooms, we help our students understand the cause of those clashes. It’s not enough just for us as teachers to understand our students’ behavior. If we want to help our students successfully adapt to American culture (assuming you’re teaching foreigners moving to America), we need to help them understand the cultural miscommunications as well.

I plan to teach ESL classes to adults in America, but I don’t yet know where in America I will teach, so I don’t know yet what the main demographic of my students will be. Once I do, I would like to do some research on the cultures my students will be coming from. Can anyone recommend a good source I can use to help me get to know my students’ cultures better, once I know what their main cultures are? That way I can try and prepare at least somewhat for potential cultural miscommunications that may arise.

5/20/20; Week 5: Response to "Cultural Differences Concern Time" Video

I found the concepts of monochronic vs. polychronic cultures interesting. From what I could glean from the video, it sounds like monochronic cultures value schedules and procedures. Specific appointment times matter. Procedures are less flexible. In polychronic cultures, human relationships are more important than schedules and procedures. Family and close friends are given first priority in people’s lives. Networking is key to accomplishing things in polychronic cultures.

These are such fundamental differences, it’s a wonder to me that people from highly monochronic cultures and people from highly polychronic cultures manage to interact productively and successfully in business and life. I am from the U.S., which is a monochronic culture. I served a mission in Italy, where I spent most of my time teaching African immigrants (mostly from Nigeria or Ghana, but many from various other African countries as well) who came from a polychronic culture. And that made our interactions difficult. Setting appointments with African investigators was always a gamble because there was no way to be sure they would be there when we showed up. Getting them to show up to church on time was a constant struggle. At times, it could be frustrating (at least to us from the monochronic culture – those from a polychronic culture didn’t seem to care as much).

I wish I had known these things about monochronic and polychronic cultures then; I think it could have helped us deal more effectively with our polychronic investigators. However, I do think it will help me deal more effectively with potential future students from polychronic cultures. Understanding what my students value and prioritize will help me interpret their actions and motivations more accurately. It will also help me help them adapt to the monochronic culture in the U.S. (where I plan to teach). Without this knowledge, I would probably find some of my students’ behavior baffling, and have no clue how to even begin to address it, but with this knowledge, I can be more aware of how my students think, and I can see more clearly how that impacts their actions as well.

5/18/20; Week 5: Response to Cultural Paradigms Videos

The assigned videos for the Cultural Paradigms lesson this week were very interesting. As Brother Ivers explains, a paradigm is a sort of culturally constructed world view. We all have paradigms, or ways we view the world, and they are shaped by the culture we inhabit as we grow up. Our different cultural paradigms impact the way we interpret the world around us, and people from different countries (and sometimes even people from different places or different families in the same country!) can interpret the same event in very different ways, because they have different cultural paradigms.

A good example of this was given in the TED Talk video, “Cultural Clashes in Defining Beauty.” The woman who gave that talk was raised in western Africa, where being thin, like she was, was considered poor, unhealthy, and ugly. All of that changed when she moved to America, and suddenly, with the very same, thin, body, she was considered beautiful, because the cultural paradigm in America is different.

Another example of this occurred in the third video we watched, where different Sudanese refugees to America were interviewed and filmed showing the tremendous differences between the country they came from (the Sudan) and the country they now live in (America). They had to be overtly taught even small things we take for granted, like throwing trash in a trash can in their own home, instead of throwing it out the window outside.

For me, the concept these videos taught was not new. I have lived abroad before, and I have experienced many cultural differences when doing so. However, I was still surprised at the extent of how many things were so unfamiliar for the Sudanese refugees – in the video, some of them didn’t know what a butter packet was in their airplane food, and since they didn’t know what it was or how to use it, they ate the chunk of butter whole, thinking that was what they were supposed to do. It would never have occurred to me to teach a refugee how to use butter, or that they need to use a trash can instead of just throwing trash out the window. It was a good reminder that even though I have lived abroad and dealt with people from many different cultures before, there are still likely to be cultural differences between me and some of my future students that I don’t – and can’t – anticipate, and I’ll have to be aware of that and find ways to work through it.

I think one of the first steps to working through differences in cultural paradigms is being aware of them. Delali Bright, the woman who gave the TED Talk, shared that when she moved to America, and was suddenly considered beautiful for her thinness, she experienced some confusion, and didn’t know which cultural paradigm she should believe. In the end, she realized that simply buying into either of them, without thought and awareness, was damaging. We need to be consciously aware of what cultural paradigms we have inherited. Only by being aware of them can we choose whether or not to buy into them. Only by being aware of them can we avoid judging others who don’t share those same paradigms. Only by being aware of them can we best interact with, understand, and help our students.

4/30/20, Week 2, Response to "Is the Great American Teacher Dead?"

I was a professor at BYU for six years, so the article "Is the Great American Teacher Dead?" which examines the quality of college professors today, felt particularly relevant to me. In this article, John Ivers raises the point that most educators didn't go into the field for the money, so, at least at the outset of their teaching careers, there was probably some deeper meaning in it for them. For me, I found great meaning in teaching. I loved the feeling of connecting with my students, helping them understand something new, helping them learn and grow.

However, I'm not sure I always did a great job connecting with the sorts of deeper issues Ivers says professors should be grappling with in their classes. I taught first-year academic writing classes. This means my focus was to teach incoming freshmen how to write at a college level. I believe deeply in the power of writing for good, both on a personal level and a societal level, and I tried to convey that belief to my students. I tried to show them how having good writing skills could benefit them personally, but I could have done a better job showing them how those skills could help them help society. I didn't ignore that aspect of things completely, but I still could have done a better job.

Now, I am preparing to teaching English as a second language to adult English language learners. I don't know yet in what setting I will teach, but it's not likely I'll teach it at another university. Regardless of where I teach, though, the issue of meaning is one I'll need to figure out. Here again, I think for me the deeper meaning I get from teaching is the chance to help students develop a critical skill, something that will be useful and necessary in their lives. And I think I can do a good job of showing my students how learning the English language will benefit them personally. But I'll need to figure out how to help my students see how learning English connects with those larger societal issues Ivers mentions in his article ("hunger, war, poverty, or starvation").

Do any of you have any thoughts on this? How does learning English help students grapple with these larger societal issues? I suppose that learning English helps students living in an English-speaking country engage with society more, just in general, so in that sense, they can then engage with these societal issues more as well. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on this, though. Any comments, classmates?