2/5/22; Week 5: Response to "Cultural Miscommunication"

At the beginning of this semester, we read what David E. Purpel (1989) said about education “[…If there is no serious connection between education and hunger, injustice, alienation, poverty, and war, then we are wasting our time, deluding each other, and breaking faith]”. And this is not foreign to the TESOL field, especially because the purpose of students from different parts of the world learning English is that they can break that language barrier and communicate with native English speakers and others that speak English and with whom we wouldn’t be able to communicate otherwise and so, interacting at all levels worldwide.

In one of the videos, we learn that miscommunication can cause different problems, including conflict and even war. I feel that the greatest opportunity that comes along with learning a foreign language is learning about foreign cultures because communication is not only about the words you say but the way you say them.

Having students learn about these differences can prepare them to interact with other foreigners in the future and also break those stereotypes we often have about other cultures. For example, this week I learn that the reason Latin American people hardly ever communicate they will not do something is because culturally speaking they tend to avoid conflict, so instead of having to face that situation, they just not do it and don’t say anything about it. Others from a different culture might think they are irresponsible and people difficult to work with, when in reality the reason for behavior is just that what matters most to them is avoid hurting feeling. Acquiring this kind of cultural knowledge can help ESOL teachers understand their student backgrounds, plan more focused and detailed lesson, design cultural diversification-oriented activities and so on. One question that this topic leaves me with is, how cultural miscommunication in the classroom affects students’ language skills development? And how can teachers avoid it?