Annette Devenish Blog

TESOL 103 W05 Cultural Miscommunications 10 February 2019 This lesson certainly was an interesting one. Maybe now I understand as to why my Chinese guests ate so little. Len has a Chinese business partner who stays in South Africa, but they deal with a company in China. When we had these gentlemen to dinner Joshua suggested that I make traditional food, for example, a braai (barbeque). I went out to get some foods I knew they would not have tasted before. When snacks were brought out, they refused at first then eventually one of them tasted it. When we sat down to dinner, they both served a teaspoon of just one or two of the food items.   I can not even remember what I made them for dessert, but I was then told they do not eat sugar. Eventually, I asked Joshua whether they had stopped at McDonald's because they really did not enjoy my food. They had brought just big and expensive gifts for us as well. They knew that they were coming for dinner. Would I still need to offer...

8th February 2019  Cultural Differences concerning Time This is a very interesting topic. While doing this lesson there were a couple of things that stood put to me. With living in South Africa, our people normally go on Polychronic time. We call it African time. Most of our professional people like doctors, lawyers, dentists etc also all work on Polychronic time. They are not as bad as the hairdresser Bro Ives spoke about. They do not book 2 to 3 patients in at the same time but if their patient needs double the time, it is okay for everybody else to just be late. I come from a family who are monochronic where you need to plan and see that you get to where you are going on time, even if it means that you are 30 minutes early. My husband and I are total opposites. He is totally Polychronic as he is late for every appointment. With saying that, he has lots of friends in the business world and they just accept him like that. Our family actually tell us to be at a function an h...

5 February 2019; TESOL Week 5 Cultural Paradigms Learning about your students for example when I went to teach Tira (a little Turkish boy) his mom politely requested that I take my shoes off. This is not part of our culture, but we often walk around with no shoes on. Also, before the mom would open the door, she had to cover her face but when with her friends inside her home it was okay not to have her face covered. My son informed me that is it polite not to knock on their door but to call them to tell them you have arrived and were at their gate. Having learned this I now know what to do when I go to their home. If you have a variety of cultures, you may encounter that one paradigm has more than one meaning. Once you get your class list and you know where your students are from you can do research so that you understand their culture. Doing a cultural lesson where the children can learn about each other. We could even have them bring some of their favorite foods and how they...

16 January 2019 W02 TESOL 103 Reading through the article for this week, I feel I need to add that I think South Africa should be included in the "Are Great South African Teachers Dead?" There are many who need to change their ways but then I am also looking at how they taught me many years ago. I certainly feel that the heading does not only apply to America. With all the research that is done there should be no more “Dead Teacher.” As William W. Purnkey says “The most important aspect to a teacher is to be a romantic.” If we put the same amount of effort and time into teaching as we did while dating, we call to do great things. In the beginning of the article we read how a simple act of a friend asking to have a passage reread gave Demosthenes the confidence to be able to go on and have a speaking career. We require faith in ourselves to be able to be the great person/teacher we desire to be. I have never blogged before because I just liked my privacy. This has tak...