Yesterday Melba and I went to a teaching workshop.

Intercultural Teaching Series
What’s the hidden message?
Paralinguisticin the Classroom

Kathryn taught us about the how teachers and students act and interact non-verbally and how to accommodate teaching students from other cultures.

These are some things Kathryn told us:

• In responses Canadian students usually say 3 sentences; asian students (she referred to confucian heritage cultures) usually say one; latin american students sometimes say 5
• Levels of social interaction L1 FUnctional/Professional, L2 Social/Polite, L3 Friendship/Warmth, L4 Love/Intimacy, L5 Sexual Interest
• Proxemics (the effects of spatial distance between people interacting) greeting, lecturing, chatting, leave taking
• Body movement - posture, shrugs, shifting, walking speed
• Haptics (touching behaviour) - handshakes/hugs/kisses/touches, when? technique? who to whom? rewards and punishments
• Volume for Utterance - people speak more loudly along this continuum CHC –> Britain –> North America –> Mediterranean –> Latin America –> Baltic Region
• Area for Gesturing - chest –> head to chest triangle –> arm’s reach
• Gesture Types - deictic, iconic, batonic, conventional, symbolic
• Head movement tilting, nodding, shaking
• Occulesics (eyes in communication) - direct eye contact, indirect eye contact, scanning for safety and control, staring for interest or control
• Voice - tone, stress, rate, volume, enunciation
• Discourse Rules - pauses/acceptance of silence, numbers of utterances allowed, expectation of affirmation; types of affirmation - praise, elaborate, personalise
• Emotional Regulation and Facial Expression - smiling, frowning, pouting, sulking, scowling, sneering
• Toastmasters says you should have a continuous smile for a North American audience

She told us some stories like:

• When a father who was Russian was talking to his son’s teacher and spoke loudly and stood up a couple of times while they were talking. She got scared and called for security and police. He had to explain to them how he was acting normal.
• She was teaching esl and early in the class a latin fellow gave a big hug to a chinese girl and she was shocked and trembling from it, which shows the differences in haptics. By the end of the class she was used to it enough to give him a hug, which shows her adaptability to the cultural difference.
• She was asked to help an scientist at a western company with fitting in. When she met with him he was staring all the time. She found out that someone had told him that in western culture you have to maintain eye contact or you will appear “shifty.” He even wrote the word shifty down. She told him not to keep eye contact longer than 3 seconds.
• thumbs up means “good” around here but means “up yours” in the middle east; rubbing your thumb and fingers together means money here but means masturbation somewhere else; a visiting student from hong kong would point at her nose to indicate herself rather than pointing to the chest as we do.

That was interesting.

The deputy governor of the Bank of Canada spoke to Hiro and me about inflation targeting on Tuesday. Some other kids were there too.

“One of the passions I have, outside of economics, is history. I will be putting inflation targeting in a historical context,” David Longworth said after being introduced by chair Burbage at the outset of the talk.

I think it would have been a snoozer for many, it seemed like this guy was more used to talking to old white guys in business suits. I found the subject matter interesting and you could tell from how he responded during question period that he was a good guy and concerned about people understanding the topic. He also seemed super smart.

• He talked about the changes in monetary policy in Canada over time.
• Canada was the first country in the post-war period to move to flexible exchange rates in 1950
• There were periods of high inflations during the oil crisis
• There were other changes along the way, changing back to a set exchange rate and so forth, but
• In Feb 1991 the Bank changed to inflation targeting.
• Over a year or so they brought the target down to around 2% (between 1% and 3%)
• He said that Canada was the first, but NZ and Chile both claim also to be the first, but he made arguments against those claims
• He showed some graphs indicating the confidence in the ability of the bank to control inflation
• One graph showed the difference between nominal and inflation adjusted bond rates
• Another showed the proportion of employment contracts with cost of living adjustment clauses (the idea is if inflation is going to be stable and low a COLA would not be necessary)
• The next graph showed the average length of collective bargaining agreements has increased to an average of 42 month (again with stability you can be more confident that what you negotiate now will be worth as much in the future)

During question period people seemed to be trying to sound smart:

• “Why do we still have a fiat money system?” — “As opposed to what?”
• “There has been so much growth in the commodity index compared to CPI. . . . Are you saying that the commodity market is inefficient?” — “No.”
• “My research is on this topic . . . (five minutes pass) . . . ?”

Then we left.

Big video store chains have done away with late fees. Since I have been borrowing a lot of videos from the Waterloo Public Library, I have notice the inversion of charges between the two types of lenders.

At video stores you pay to borrow, but bringing it back late is free; at libraries borrowing is free, but you pay to bring it back late.

For the first time in several terms, I am not captaining a team in campus recreation soccer. I am playing on a team organized by Steve, who has tended goal for us in the past. This term, because of the season, we play in a basketball court sized gym.
We have not been doing well. We are winless (and tieless) in four matches. I missed the first two, so i have only seen and played in the last two.

In our third match I scored first on a penalty, blasting it into the bottom right corner, 1-0. Soon after
Christian put in another goal. It was 2-0.

We ended up losing 5-2.

In our last match, this week, I scored again, but it didn’t help. We ended up losing 8-2.

The problem is that we aren’t playing in a co-ordinated way. Individually the minimum talent and skill is still good, but several players aren’t committed to close marking on d and running into space and supporting on the o. In the small court mistakes are easily punished with goals for the other team as we have seen several times.

I think we can improve our play with a few simple things. It will just take some leadership and cooperation.