Week 10: ICC Reflective Video 1

This is the first of my ICC reflections which are due week 12. The second one, in which I try to teach about the intercultural usages of gesture, can be found here: http://tomsteaching.blogspot.kr/2012/11/week-11-icc-reflective-video-2.html.

Note: This post reflects on the CCDA parts of this lesson, which run from 9"32 to 28"57.

I understand what we’re supposed to be doing with Cross Cultural Discourse Analysis. It makes sense, and I can see the value in doing it. But actually trying to make it work in my classroom is a real struggle. Here’s the first attempt I made a couple of weeks ago.

Actually, this isn’t my first attempt at culture in the classroom. In the past I’ve done sections on holidays and customs, and occasionally even taught about table manners. However these were always me showing my students what other cultures are like. It was very much a presentation, with perhaps a couple of students trying things out. I never helped them engage with or think about the material, and I doubt they developed intercultural competence from what I taught.

My aim in this lesson, however, was to let the students work out more about other cultures for themselves with my lead. Let’s talk about how that went (I’ll give you a hint: not well!).

After a look at me showing the students the first video (about Paris Baguette) it was very clear that I was still dragging my students through the material and pointing out interesting things on the way. I asked them rather meaningless questions (Who is in the video? What are they doing?) and proceeded to tell them what this means for each culture. All my questions were very leading, and if the students didn’t give me the answer I was looking for I guided them to it.

The work we did around the second video was a bit better. Because the content was more unfamiliar to the students and the video was more interesting they seemed more engaged. They were genuinely trying to work out what the people in the video were doing. We managed to sort this out and identify who Christmas in the UK seems to be for, and the activity that followed afterwards was good for demonstrating this point. However I seem to have dropped the cultural significance of the video when I began the activity, and simply refocused on only the English. I think this was partly due to a lack of time, and partly because I felt I had pushed the cultural discourse as far as it could go with these students. They were losing focus again!

I can’t work out a way around this. For a start it is evident from the recording that I struggle to keep the class focused; I can get them to pay attention, but when I start asking questions and try to create a dialogue with them a dozen different conversations burst out (many in Korean, too). On top of this many of the students seem to understand my questions, but most of them aren’t really capable or motivated enough to answer them. Or perhaps they can answer, but their answers aren’t as meaningful as they would be in Korean. They say what they know rather than what they need to say to express a real opinion or observation. How can I develop a meaningful discussion of cultural differences in a large class who don’t have the language skill or focus to express anything helpful to the subject?

Perhaps I just chose the wrong type of activity. They’re just not ready for a discussion! But then what else do I do to encourage CCDA? My next idea for a lesson is to do an activity from this week’s reading – Activity H (cross cultural trivia) - but rather than reading them out like a quiz I would demonstrate each one and ask groups of students to assign a meaning to each one. I could then help them to see how different cultures have different forms of non–verbal communication. Might this work better? I’m hoping so, because I don’t want to try to work my way through another class like this one!