10/26/21; Week 7: "Differences in Manners"

Personal Experience

 I remember one time when I was talking with friends from different cultures, the majority were American, there was one Korean guy and a Mexican girl (me). We were talking about how is the place where we live, when it was my turn I answered:

"It's pretty nice if you don't mind listening to shootings in the middle of the night"

Now, unless you are from my culture or have a similar one, you are probably shocked, my friends were no different. I left my phone for a minute to attend something and when I returned, I was met with conceded texts, I realized that even though it may be common here to shoot at the sky in the middle of the night to celebrate things like New Year's Eve, the Mexican Revolution, and the victory of your favorite soccer team, it could be considered dangerous and frightening to the rest of the world. I had to explain that everything was fine and be more careful with my comments from thereon. 

General Ideas

There can be a lot of misunderstandings because of what is considered good manners in our culture. For example, how do you greet people? Do you wave and give a polite smile from a distance, give a firm handshake, or give a big hug? How would you feel if you are greeted in another way different from what you are used to?

              

Some gestures or habits you perceive as universal can have a totally different meaning in other cultures, something helpful is to pay close attention to what others are doing and follow their example.

In the TESOL Classroom

"I'm so excited to start this new year of school and get along with my classmates, but how can I manage this when they are so weird and rude?!"

It wouldn't be surprising if every student in a cross-cultural classroom had this though, after all, we can become one-track-minded when it comes to how we should behave according to our culture. An example would be with cultures with high expressivity tolerance vs. cultures with low expressivity tolerance, high tolerance students may seem rude because of how much they "interrupt" the teacher while the low tolerance students may seem like they aren't interested in the class.

As TESOL teachers, we can teach our students that different paradigms exist and that it is ok to act differently, we can work in getting to know each other's culture and create a bridge of understanding from one culture to another.