Some of the cultural frustrations that my participants have discussed include language barriers in their classes, and other students misunderstanding them because of their accent. Surprisingly, most of the frustrations that my participants have expressed are related to language. I was expecting them to express more difficulty with cultural assimilation. However, they often say that few drastic cultural differences exist that they are unable to accommodate to, and they have already been so exposed to American culture that they knew what to expect before coming here. Language, however, is something that constantly has to be worked on in order to improve, and accent is not something that can be obtained very quickly. Personally, I sometimes feel bad for having to ask the participants to repeat something because I could not understand it properly the first time. I know that asking politely and affirming their response are good techniques to alleviate this, but I still feel as though it puts them on the spot negatively.
I think that having workshops specifically designed to improve accent and pronunciation might be helpful for international students. Of course, practicing conversational skills should be prioritized, but I think that mastering details in pronouncing words like a native speaker can give English language learners more confidence in their abilities. I think that learning should be a combination of practicing words and grammar, but also training yourself to pronounce new words and sounds more effortlessly.
Overall, my Chat Cafe sessions have been going well, and I think that it really helps in terms of language and accent development to be able to practice English and converse with a native speaker. I have tried a few different activities with my participants that have worked well. For example, we played Mad Libs this week, and they really enjoyed it. Each person got a turn being the writer, so they filled in word suggestions from other students and then read the completed story aloud, which I thought was very helpful for their grammar and pronunciation skills. Using prepared discussion questions also works very well with my quieter group, and this is something I would like to continue doing with them every week.
Hi Mena,
ReplyDeleteI thought your post was really interesting because I've actually gotten the opposite impression from my group. At the beginning of the semester, quite a few of them expressed cultural frustrations such as not understanding pop-culture references in lectures. I've found that my Chat Café sessions usually end up being about American quirks. Most recently, we talked about how some students in Ann Arbor have persevered enough to continue wearing shorts even when it's 30 degrees in the morning. The girl in my group who is still coming regularly is particularly interested in American holidays, especially Halloween and Thanksgiving. The impression I got from her is that, in China, wearing shorts in cold seasons or silly costumes on the 31st of October is undignified, to say the least. I think this difference in experiences between our groups might be due to the fact that Wenxin speaks English extremely well and she seems fairly confident about her ability to express herself. She's also been learning English for a very long time since her schools in China were all very serious about English class. I wonder if students who are less proficient in English than her focus enough on linguistic challenges that the cultural differences almost stand out less to them? Or maybe this difference in their frustrations is just due to differences in personalities?
Mad Libs is a really cool idea for the sessions, especially because it's a game you can play no matter how many people show up that day. I've been reluctant to introduce games because of my shaky attendance, but Mad Libs seems like it could work even for me. I also think it's neat that you've adapted your facilitating style to your group's quietness - it sounds like your sessions are going really well!