From a TEFL student to a TEFL Teacher

      In this post, we will discuss personal space. I will add at the end of the post an interesting article about this topic. Some years ago, I saw a news story that was talking about violence in traffic. Why do some people get too angry at traffic? If someone is too close or makes some drastic movement against our car, we see this as a threat.  Our bodies are immensely fragile than our cars. A hit in our bodies will be harmer than a hit in our cars. So why we are so concerned and even mad and angry in traffic?   In the news, a psychologist said that we tend to see our cars as an extension of ourselves. And as our car "is our body" we apply the same rules for it as for our personal space. It was an interesting analysis. When a car is too near to ours, we aren't inside these body personal space. Our bodies remain safe and aware of any personal contact inside the car. But as we consider the car an extension of our body, any threat against it, it is a threat ...

 For the last post from this week, we will talk about Attributional Tendencies. According to Wikipedia Attribution " deals with how individuals perceive the causes of everyday experience, as being either external or internal." So, for example, when people have success is due because of their effort, their desire, or some kind of meritocracy. But when the success is from another person, then is because of the environment, or some kind of external help. The same occurs in the failure, but then changes to external reasons to explain our own failures and the failures from another person is their fault. This is important to have in mind when Teaching. How our Attributional Tendencies can affect our judgement about our students? It's an exercise to put this aside to really understand and help better our students. How do their Attributional Tendencies affect their performances? This is a subject to be studied deeper for sure!

  I don't know exactly where to begin. I have a lot of things and ideas on my mind. How Culture and Psychology can be so related? One thing that I have learned is sometimes we can just go and be spot on our ideas. Scaffolding is a slower way to achieve the goal, but when it hit it, it hit it!     We have talked in the last posts about different aspects of Culture and how this can be related to our experience as Teachers. But today we will talk about how our culture can affect our psyche. And I need to confess that I deeply understand what that means. You know, all people who suffer from a Mental Illness understand it. Our Culture tends to judge people suffering from a mental illness as inferior, or less intelligent. So, what do we do if a family member or ourselves suffers from any of the many Mental Illnesses? We hide. We hide deeply, to not be judged or criticized.      How do I deeply understand this? Because this is a thing that I hide for myself. Since...

      This is a subtle topic to discuss. For all of the non-written rules in culture, manners tend to be the more delicate. And more extensive as well. It seems that we have a long list of the do and don't in each culture.      I haven't had the opportunity to travel abroad, and I am aware of some of the differences in manners from region to region in my own country, so I never put this into real practice outside my comfort zone. But getting acquainted with the general rules is always good. Especially living in a multicultural city like São Paulo. I am still in my comfort zone, but we have a lot of immigrants living here. It's a good neighborhood practice to understand their culture and the differences between my own culture. As teachers we also need to have in mind that the majority of our students are learning English to be able to travel, no matter if for business or pleasure, but to travel abroad. So, we need to understand these differences in manners t...

      Today we will talk about Cross-Cultural Students in the Classroom. How we as Teachers can conduct a class with a variety of cultural backgrounds? How can we use the differences in our favor? How can we anticipate some possible barriers/issues?     As we go deeper in this discussion, I want to invite you to read my opinion regarding Cultural issues such as Paradigm, Differences Concerning Time, Miscommunication, and so on, as you can find here in this blog. All of those mentioned topics help us to answer my initial questions. You see, I am deeply passionate about music. When I was younger, I used to sleep listening to a cassette from the Tabernacle Choir. And when I was listening, I was supposed to be the conductor. It always impressed me how one single person can produce such a difference in the interpretation of music! For a non-music-taught person, it seems that the conductor is just making movements with their arms. But for a music-taught person, each m...

    Living in society demands certain written and non-written rules about what is permitted and what is prohibited. To be accepted we must do the permitted thing and avoid the prohibited. But have you known that these rules changed dramatically according to the place that you live?     We have what is called Individualism and also Collectivism. In Individualism, you are the center. You are the most important part of society. This means that you satisfy first your needs and then the others. But when you are doing something wrong, is just your fault. In Collectivism in another hand, the group needs to come first. This means putting your need aside for the benefit of the group.     When teaching we need to understand this background from our students to better understand and know how to conduct the class. Which will be the best approach to use? The student will receive and perceive our conducting in the same way? How to extract their best-in-class activities? ...

       We will start this week talking about Emotional Expressivity. For, this subject has many layers than the Culture by itself. Personality also plays an important role in this topic. I think that personality has a strong impact especially on those people who is "different" than their own culture.     Allow me to share my personal experience to explain it better. I live in a large country, with many different ancestors. In the south, where I was born and raised, most of the population are descendants of East Europeans. In the Southeast, we have descendants from West Europe, especially Portugal and also from Africa. Nowadays, we are a mixed people, but we still can find some aspects from our Ancestors Culture in each region. In the south, we have "colder" people than in the rest of the country. Curitiba's people are known as the coldest ones! For them, that's ok to not greet everyone or hug them, to not invite colleagues to their homes, to not talk with...

        For the third post in the week, we will discuss Cultural Miscommunication. What seems to be so easy, that actually can cause bad impressions, sometimes problems... As we become a globalized world often, we can see some cross-culture paradigms. Still, we can be so different between our cultures.      Here in Brazil, some people brag about how we can change for the better some traditional foreign foods. From the bread, sausage, and mustard from a traditional American hot dog, here they add so many toppings that an American couldn't recognize the food as a Hot dog. The same for other foods. This isn't rude or can't cause a big misunderstanding but like those simple things, there are a lot of others who really can cause a mess.      My husband had an American companion once, in his mission. They were in a ward activity and there was this young woman. Often, she touches his arm as they talked. My husband's companion was very ...

      This is for sure a great topic to discuss! I was introduced to the concept of monochronic and polychronic time persons. Those who are monochronic are concerned about schedules and procedures. They obey a set of written and not written rules about how sacred time is. I can't think of a better example than the "time for Tea" from England. The British are worldly well-known for how accurate they are concerning their time schedule. The polychronic on the other hand is self-orientated to preserve relationships and family. They are sensitive and are concerned to not harm other person's feelings. Obviously, Latin-Americans are the most well-known for such behavior.      It's fun to see how these two kinds of people interact with each other, and how they bring their paradigms with them. The monochronic one will always be upset with the lack of responsibility and contempt with law and procedures from the polychronic. And the polychronic will always think that ...

     For the first of the new three entries from this week, we were assigned to discuss Culture Paradigms.  We saw a lot of examples of how paradigms differ from country to country. But they also differ from different places in the same country in a country big as Brazil, and they also differ from one generation to another.     It's my understanding that culture changes along the way, and when we discuss it we must have this in mind. We can't take our knowledge about a different culture for granted. We can follow this change in our media/entertainment industry. During the '60s was completely acceptable a commercial with a happy wife showing how her house was the cleanest in the neighborhood due to her new vacuum cleaner acquisition. Nowadays the same commercial will suffer an attack from part of the modern society. I don't want to dive into such differences between cultural paradigms across generations, but this is one thing that we need to have in mind as ...