Artifacts 3: Examining a “Problem of Practice”

Yiran Liao

Problem Was Caused by Different Cultural Backgrounds

In the university, as a student of Teaching Chinese as a Foreign

Language, I learned a lot about comparative culture, education system,

cultural exchange between China and other countries. Also, we had been

given enough chances to communicate with many second language

learners. During my experience of teaching internship, I encountered a

problem related to students’ cultural backgrounds. I found it was difficult

to conduct instructions with students who are under different cultural

backgrounds, because they showed diverse learning strategies and interests,

it was not easy for me to engage all the students. In this essay, I will explain

the problem in details and describe my assumption.

The second language learners in my university were divided into

different classes by their language proficiency instead of their nationality,

thus the classroom was like a salad bowl in which many different cultures

mixed together. Once I had an opportunity to give a demo class of spoken

Chinese for them, it was the first time I noticed that people’s behavior can

be influenced by their cultural background. There were fifteen students in

this class, more than half of them were from Korea and Japan while others

were Americans and Italians.

Students showed different communicated attitudes at the very beginning

of this class. I designed an ice-breaking activity to introduce myself and

students themselves in the first class. I expected students to get familiar

with each other as well as practiced basic Chinese greeting language. I

found that western students were more active and willing to speak with

different students while eastern students preferred to just speak with the

students who are from the same country with them.

Then I noticed that every time I designed an activity, students showed

different attitudes. For example, once I taught the facial parts and designed

an activity named “Find the missing people”, I expected students to circle

the words they have learned in their own missing people notice at first, and

then share their information with the group members and to find the

missing people as a whole group. However, I found eastern students want

to follow the procedures and try to work as a team, while some western

students preferred to work alone and ignored the procedures. Although

students thought it was an interesting activity, the whole class was out of

control at that moment.

 I kept observation during my internship, compared each student’s

reaction of my instruction. When I asked them a question, the Korean

students and Japanese students would take minutes to think carefully

before they answered it, while the American students and Italians were

answered it immediately. Then I wrote several words on the blackboard

and asked them to make a conversation. In order to find out how they will

action when they met difficulties, I gave them two new words that they had

never been taught before. Comparatively, I found that when the eastern

students noticed the two new words, they tried to use dictionary to figure

out the meanings by themselves, while the western students were directly

asking me why I gave them two new words.

Compared with the western students, eastern students were quieter and

more introverted in the class. They preferred to take notes rather than

speaking out their thoughts. As for the western students, they liked stating

their views frankly without thinking more about other people’s feelings.

By comparing the different behaviors between the western students and

eastern students, I realized that the cultural backgrounds in the second

language class are diversity, so the teacher should observe carefully and be

respectful for each student’s cultural background. It is difficult to figure

out targeted teaching methods with students who are under different
cultural background, but I will try to find the balance and similarities

between them in my future teaching experience.