2/7/22; Week 6: Response to "Individualism vs Collectivism".

Watching the video taught me that there are different factors that affect the way people act and one of them has to do with whether they grew up in an individualist society or collectivist society. In individualist societies people are encouraged to be independent and individualist from a young age. Americans, for example, tell their children to do their own things and own up their mistakes; in fact, individual mistakes are tolerated in these kinds of societies. However, in cultures that are collectivist, there is little tolerance for mistakes that could affect the group, decisions that affect the family for example, need to be consulted with family members.

These cultural differences can affect the way students reach out for help in class, their attitude towards class and how they perceive team work. The potential misunderstandings that might come up in a culturally diverse TESOL classroom are many, for example, the outcome of a team work activity can be either successful or not depending on students’ attitude towards it based on how individualist or collectivists students are. Also, the way lesson plans are set up should be based on those traits. I personally feel that there should be a middle ground, too individualist could make a student less capable to interact in big groups and too collectivist could keep students from becoming self-reliant. But can we reach that middle ground? And what success stories are there out there of teachers carrying out activities that would be suitable for both individualism and collectivism-oriented students?