"Don't give her money."

W06 Individualism vs. Collectivism

The father and breadwinner of a young immigrant family passed away unexpectedly. He, his wife, and children were members of my parents’ congregation. They were family friends, as well. People in the congregation wanted to help, which is wonderful. Losing a spouse is awful and especially painful when it’s unexpected and the family lives in a foreign (to them) country. My mom was in a leadership position in her congregation and part of councils that look out for the members. She gave the other leaders one key piece of counsel: “Don’t give her money.”

Why was my liberal feminist mother recommending they not help her friend out with money in a truly unfortunate situation? Wouldn’t a newly widowed mother in a foreign land need money because her family lost their source of income? Wouldn’t some immediate cash be a great idea to help meet the next rent bills and buy some time for her to grieve and plan? This kind of charitable response is very appropriate and much appreciated for a typical American widow. Immediate financial aid doesn’t necessarily apply to a situation for someone from another culture.

My mom’s friend’s culture is a group-oriented one. According to what my mom knows about it, some of the money, if not all, would have gone to her husband’s extended family in living Africa and possibly even to members of their local African social community. That’s how things go in their culture. Money offered with intent to help my mom’s friend and her children might not be used 100% for the immediate and intended situation. My mom recommended they give her direct goods instead to make sure the boys and mother got their needs met and that their help went where they wanted it to.

The situation had different rules because of cultural differences in individualism and collectivism. Americans saw the death as directly affecting the nuclear family of the deceased. This specific African culture saw it as affecting a larger family and community unit. The American widow figures out what’s best for her nuclear family and does it (usually with some counsel, but ultimately making the decision herself). This African widow had stronger pushes and others who felt they should make decisions for her. It’s definitely not a bad thing to have people looking out for you in times of hardship. It’s wonderful that she had so many people to help look out for her. There are simply different cultural approaches to situations that need consideration, particularly when we’re outsiders looking in or wanting to help.

Individualism and collectivism both have their pros and cons. Full cultural assimilation isn’t my goal as a TESOL/TEFL instructor. I’m not out there to convert them to any supposed wonderful joys of American individualism. I see them as individuals and focus on their individual needs, but I’m not making judgment calls for them on what aspects of which cultures to retain or discard. I help my students learn English and culture so they can more effectively understand and navigate a new environment and make their own judgments. When they learn the individualistic tendencies of their new culture, they’ll be able to see how to adapt their own behaviors in specific situations or understand where people might be coming from.

Do you have any stories like this one, where a response to an incident had to be changed because of collective cultural factors?

Navigating Expression

W06: Differences in Emotional Expressivity

I have zero poker face. Absolutely none. I literally jump up and down and flail in excitement over things. I did it over buying South Korean albums last month. I did it over my most recent calling as an English Connect specialist last week. I’m constantly moving, singing, dancing, and laughing. My tone of voice and choice of words varies with my emotions, as well. I’m also terrible at hiding my disappointment, though I try not to dwell on disappointing things too much. I also tightly hug people every chance I get, including members of the Stake Presidency. I’m a very expressive person.

Each culture has social norms for public expression.

In America, I get away with my expressiveness because of my size, age, gender, and looks. I’m a 5 foot tall petite female who looks much younger than her age. I get complimented on my “energy” and “enthusiasm” frequently, with actual comments such as “you’re like a cartoon character” or “you’re a little pixie”. My behaviors are largely seen in a positive light.

People would definitely respond differently if I had the build, age, and appearance of my large, scruffy grandfather, though. There would be more negative feedback for the same kinds of actions. He would be considered “weird”, “strange”, or possibly “gay” if he exhibited the same behaviors. People would feel uncomfortable with exuberant displays from a man of his stature. That doesn’t fit in with the general norms in American culture.

Gaps in perception can be even larger when cultures are switched instead of actors. Holding hands used to be seen as highly intimate and something shameful for public in Japan a few decades ago. In South Korea, everyone holds hands, including adult male friends. South Koreans are extremely expressive in their same sex friendships (http://askakorean.blogspot.com/2009/10/i-love-you-man.html). American romantic couples hold hands all the time, but male friends never do. Each of these cultures perceives the physical act of holding hands in different ways and ascribe different meanings to the same act.

As a guide to a new language and culture for my students, I need to help them be aware of such things. We all need to be aware of how we personally interpret things and how the culture we’re learning about interprets them, too. We want to avoid negative labels and misunderstandings. We don’t want our students to wind up in a sexual harassment misunderstanding because they were too expressive in a setting with low expressivity norms like an office or misunderstood friendliness for romantic interest. We also don’t want them perceived as a threat or responding physically to a situation where they feel threatened but aren’t. Forms of expression should be respected; students just need help learning the right times and places for using them in a different cultural environment.

Cultural Details and Priorities

W05: Cultural Miscommunication

Deep respect for others’ cultures is just one of the pillars of my soul. I’ve loved learning about other cultures my entire life. I remember watching a Japanese Hello Kitty video with my friend when I was very little and being fascinated by it even though I didn’t understand a word of it at the time. I live for finding anthropological details in foreign shows. What kinds of beds are people sleeping on? What are they eating for breakfast? How are they addressing each other? How much physical contact do people have with family members, friends, and lovers?

I’ve generally thought of myself as being culturally aware. I’ve been aware from a very young age that outside factors, both macro and micro, shape the way we act and interact. The readings for my TESOL class this week showed me how little of the details of cultures I actually know, though. I’m still lacking greatly even with the cultures I’m more familiar with, like South Korean, Japanese, and Chinese. In one video showing a series of culture-based commercials for HSBC bank, a foreigner was visiting China and eating a meal with a bunch of Chinese businessmen. He cleaned his very full bowl and was brought another one. After polishing off that one, he got yet another bowl!

Here's where that part starts:


I had to laugh! It reminded me of when I was at a friend’s house and her mother kept pouring me more and more chrysanthemum tea as I finished each cup. I didn’t want to seem ungrateful so I kept drinking. My daughter didn’t really like it so I drank some of hers and got more refills there, too! I had known enough to eat while she was looking during the meal (which is polite in Chinese culture) but not enough to get out of there with fewer shots of flower tea!

The details for cultural interactions are extremely helpful. Teaching my students about things like eye contact, personal space, and how to address people and present oneself are so important. Digging deeper, though, will help carry students beyond whatever details I can cram into a lesson. It’s impossible to teach every single cultural difference, partially because we’re blind to our own culture sometimes. I should help my students learn about the “whys” of American culture. That way they’ll have a good framework for situations that will come up that we might not have covered.

The different details of a culture’s interactions really come from the priorities of the culture itself. Japanese culture is a collective kind of culture, so many individual manners are really about groups. Latin-American cultures are about social relationships, which is why they’re less worried about time and demonstrate more physical affection. American culture is very individualistic and a bit self-centered, which is why Americans can be direct and assertive when interacting with people who would be considered of a more respectful status in other cultures. Learning more about a culture’s priorities can help an outsider feel more comfortable and even more charitable towards others when cultural misunderstandings arise.

"Is Paris Closed?!"

(I'll get to the title in a bit.)

Week 05: Cultural Differences Concerning Time

This week we learned about cultural differences regarding time. Brother Ivers taught us about the concepts of monochronic and polychronic approaches to time.

Monochronic cultures believe that time is law. Deadlines must be met, appointments are to begin at their exact hour, and time is a valuable and even sacred commodity. Being late or slow is viewed negatively. Social relationships suffer if people don’t keep their social commitments to time. Time must be respected.

Polychronic cultures value other things, typically relationships, as higher than time. Time is not sacred and matters far less than social bonds. If a friend or family member needs something, that takes precedence over whatever else was scheduled at that time. Lateness is not a problem since there were clearly more important things going on than whatever was scheduled. Time can be ignored.

You can see how these views are very different. That can cause problems when people with opposing cultural understandings of time interact. I struggled with this a bit when travelling in Europe. I travelled there with a BYU-I study tour for three weeks. I had been looking forward to shopping overseas for foreign language books and interesting instruments. Unfortunately for me, stores were closed whenever I wanted to go shopping! Online many places were listed as open, but in person they were closed! It was quite common for the stores to close for an hour or two in the middle of the day in Italy. Employees would still be there sometimes, but they wouldn’t work with any shoppers and would say they were closed. France was even trickier. So many stores had signs on them that said they’d be closed for several weeks! It honestly felt like Paris was closed. It took one of the professors three attempts before he found an open French bookstore. In these other countries I visited, other things were far more important than standing in a store for regular hours for potential customers.

My lack of opportunity to shop was a minor problem compared to ones that happen to people living in cultures with different time paradigms than they’re used to. A polychronic individual in the US might have trouble with doctor fees for missed appointments or keeping a job with strict hours and time clocks. School truancy or lingering somewhere after closing time can have legal repercussions, too. As a TESOL instructor I should be a guide for polychronic students who need to adapt to a monochronic society. They won’t be culturally conditioned to understand the haste and immutability of monochronic timing. I need to make sure I teach them the new time paradigm of their target culture to help them be more successful in a new environment.

What are your experiences with monochronic and polychronic concepts of time?

Colorblindness and Cultural Interpretation

Week 05: Cultural Paradigms

There’s an adorable couple I follow on YouTube that makes art videos (Doodle Date). They make videos of them drawing together and being ridiculously cute in such a wholesome way. There’s a bit of an interesting quirk about the boyfriend in the couple. Adam is colorblind. He doesn’t perceive colors the same way as most people. He has a lot of trouble with red and green. If he doesn’t have help, either through color names or his girlfriend Steph’s help, his art choices would look quite strange to people with more typical color vision. With outside help, he can adapt to a different view on things he perceives in a certain way. He can make art that looks appealing to perspectives and interpretations different than his own natural ones.

Culture is the same way. We each have ways we see and understand the world. We have cultural paradigms, or frameworks by which we understand and interpret things. Those things can be simple or complicated and vary from culture to culture. For example, is a hug from someone a welcome comfort, an expression of romantic affection, or an invasion of personal space? The answer depends on your paradigms. We develop them as we’re socialized in various environments. People who share similar cultures will have many of the same paradigms. In several Asian cultures, people don’t wear shoes inside the house. Americans view guns very differently than the British, who abhor them being in homes.

As teachers, we need to be aware of cultural paradigms. People can face social difficulties if they’re applying their paradigms to interactions in a different culture. We need to help them learn the new ones to foster positive interactions in the target culture. National Geographic has a clip on YouTube (here) where they followed some young men from Sudan as they transitioned to living in America. They were really struggling to adapt to their new environment and were even having trouble with stores and police. Targeted assistance can ease some of that psychological and social strain.

While we’re teaching people about different paradigms, we should also teach them that they’re subjective constructs. Brother Ivers, a professor at Brigham Young University - Idaho, teaches that “culture creates false needs and false problems.” It’s true! There are few universal cultural paradigms and we can frequently find ones that view things in opposing ways. In one video we watched this week, Delali Bright spoke about the differences in the way she was treated because of her appearance between her country of origin and the United States. In her old country, she was bullied and subjected to all kinds of medical treatments because of her appearance. In the US, she’s treated better socially and is complemented for the exact same attributes. She didn’t change at all. The only thing that changed was the dominant cultural paradigm for beauty of her environment. There was no longer a problem about her appearance

I enjoy learning about cultural paradigms. I find the details of them interesting, like chopstick positioning, the Filipino "mano" gesture, and how people address each other. I look forward to learning more about the other views out in the world as I assist students in navigating the paradigms I’m used to.

Want Some Soup?

Week 02: Response to “Is the Great American Teacher Dead?”

I offered my uncle some leftover soup this week. When he asked what kind of soup it was, I was stumped! I didn’t actually know how to describe it. It was just “soup” to me that I had thrown together from various ingredients. It didn’t have a particular name or anything. I was surprisingly flustered when trying to “sell” the soup to my uncle. It was a really good soup, but I was unprepared to describe it in an enticing and engaging manner. I wasn’t able to convey the tastiness of it. I wasn’t able to help him be excited about it, and my presentation of the soup left a lot to be desired. It definitely didn’t sound like an exciting meal from my efforts.

That’s how teaching can be. The material I’m trying to teach is a delicious, nutritious soup. Some students will be happy to eat the knowledge soup by virtue of it being soup, but others are picky or reluctant to try it. I know it’s tasty and valuable knowledge, but if I can’t convey that in an engaging manner, my students won’t see it the same way.

I want to cultivate a desire to learn in all of my students, including the reluctant ones. In order to do that, I need to work on my delivery. I need to make sure I’m selling that knowledge hard and showing them the value of it!

Brother Ivers, a professor at BYU-I, gives some fantastic tips in his article in the Journal of Invitational Theory & Practice (2012, Volume 12) titled “Is the Great American Teacher Dead?”. While reading about these techniques is great, we’re fortunate to have fantastic examples we can watch.

Bill Nye is a great example. He’s done a fantastic job of teaching children (and anyone) various scientific concepts in an engaging and entertaining manner. Classrooms still play his videos decades after he finished “Bill Nye the Science Guy”. (Last I checked, they were available on Netflix.) My family and I still reference scenes and songs from various episodes. Yelling “VOLCANOES!” made my middle child giggle for ages!

On the more contemporary side of things, we have the amazing Crash Course and SciShow series on YouTube. The hosts and writers combine deep knowledge with humor on a wide variety of subjects, from world history to chemistry to literature to even business!

Even in writing this, I’m more aware of the need for a good delivery. I absolutely love Bill Nye the Science Guy, Crash Course, and SciShow, but I feel inadequate in describing their value and appeal. I definitely need to work on that skill. How do you think I did, and where can I improve?