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.