2/15/22; Week 7: Response to "Cross-Cultural Students in the Classroom”

The most exciting characteristic of a TESOL classroom is its cultural diversity. Cross-cultural students can come from different parts of a same country or from different countries. It’s interesting to see that the way students behave in class are influenced by their cultural background, this also affects how they perceive their peers and teachers. The Professor in the video gives an example about how American students walking into the classroom late without apologizing come across as rude for Japanese students, who highly respect teachers and other professionals.

Having Peru, a very conservative society, I grew up acknowledging that my teachers were important figures in my academic life and I needed to be respectful to them. I remember that back in Elementary and all the way to High School, my classmates and I had to stand up every time a teacher or the school principal would walk in; learning that students don’t do that in other places is shocking for me. Not that I want to be respected in that way, but just seeing students act so laid back, might make me think they are not taking the class seriously, when they actually are, but my judgement might be clouded for using my own cultural background as a point of reference to evaluate my student’s performance.

Just as the Japanese see American students as rude, or me thinking a student is not committed to the class, students can have different perceptions and thus attitudes towards their peers, and these can definitely affect their affective filter; making time spend in the classroom not as productive as it could be. It can also affect the relationship student – teacher and student – student. So, in order to help them understand each other, would it be ok to point out some differences between our cultures during class?