“Words do not live in isolation they enter into all kinds of groupings held together by a complex, instable and highly subjective network of associations. The sum of this associative network is the vocabulary” (Ullmann, 1963).
Sounds a lot like the explanations we give for ‘culture’ in anthropology. Swap ‘words’ for ‘people’ and ‘vocabulary’ for ‘culture’ and I think it actually works pretty well! This feels important to me somehow – especially considering how interested I am in both culture/anthropology, and teaching language. I kind of like “People do not live in isolation they enter into all kinds of groupings held together by a complex, instable and highly subjective network of associations. The sum of this associative network is the culture”.
My place is somewhere outside of this collective culture, currently. Obviously this is an uncomfortable place to be. Well, no I guess I can’t be ‘outside’ of it, but I am certainly occupying a different cultural position than what I am used to. Is that one facet of culture shock? Not just a reaction to seeing a culture do things very differently from your own, but having to deal with a different position personally. It’s certainly affecting me. I don’t feel shocked by it, but I am dealing with feelings of outsider-ness, imposed inferiority (yeah, I made that term up), and miscommunication – due as much to different cultural expectations as language barriers. I feel I am thought less of because of my… well… race. I am used to this a little bit in other areas, especially being a young female I have certainly encountered men who appear to think less of my thoughts because of my age and gender, but this is my first time experiencing any type of racism directed at me. Ok, it’s totally not as bad as that word makes it sound, and it’s certainly not mean or malicious, or even intentional (and intentions matter, right?), but it is definitely there. Or maybe it’s just the young female thing, and I’m misinterpreting it in the wrong light because of my own prejudices. That’s entirely possible too.
Everyone just wants to feel valued, right?
Ok, so my second day of school today. I’ve given the final two presentation of my ‘about me’ slideshow – and thank goodness! I couldn’t keep doing that same presentation for too much longer J Some of the classes seemed to quite enjoy it, while others weren’t so interested. They were all fairly polite and good-natured though. I’m joining in on some classes this afternoon to act as an accent model again. Mr Baek told me to join his class for the 5th and 6thperiods to help him teach. I asked for some clarification on what we’d be covering, so I could spend this time getting familiar with the material, but he wouldn’t tell me. He kind of just looked at me weirdly and told me not to worry, he had it under control. That’s pretty much the answer I get when I ask for any kind of heads up on the material. He just laughs and says not to worry, he’ll help me. I tried to tell him I’m not worried, I just want to prepare, but he didn’t get it. So, my best teaching will not probably be happening any time soon! Which kind of sucks, because I already feel like I’m seen as a classroom assistant, and I can’t really show my phat teaching skillz if I can’t prepare J. Not at this early stage in my teaching career anyway. Maybe one day I’ll be sweet as on the fly.
I’ll try again this afternoon to find out what I have to cover tomorrow. It wouldn’t be so bad if all the activity instruction weren’t in Korea, but they are, so I kind of need to work out what the students have to do before hand, or else waste time and disrupt the flow of the lesson while I work it out, or have to ask. Actually, maybe asking the students to translate activity instructions into English could be used as a learning tool? However, I don’t think Mr Baek would let that happen. He’s very big on interrupting and helping in Korean. I guess I will learn to accommodate it, but at the moment it throws me right off my stride each time.. Sometimes I’ll actually have moved on to a different point of theme and he will interrupt and talk in Korean about the previous one, which is a bit off-putting. It must be confusing for the students – especially if I launch back into where I was in English, so I generally repeat what I was saying from the beginning so they can catch up and follow. Maybe I am teaching too fast? That’s a good idea, actually. I’ll try really slowing down and see if that helps. However, if I’m supposed to be providing a realistic language model to the students, then going at a snail’s pace is not exactly helpful. But, I guess if they can’t keep up or understand, that’s even worse.. So, I will trial ‘Sam’s Super Slow Speaking’ after lunch J.
Gosh, can you see what’s happening here? I have no one to talk to, so I’m talking to myself through text. Welcome to my brain, anyone who is reading.
No comments:
Post a Comment