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.