Last week and the week before that we had Japanese guests join our beginners / intermediate level classes for conversation workshops.
In the beginners level classes they talked about a certain topic; "What makes you wonder in Japan", and many students shared their opinions and questions. Many interesting questions that Japanese people would not expect / come up with such as "Why do Japanese kids wear short sleeved shirts and short pants during physical fitness class even in cold season?" "Why do Japanese people stop and wait for traffic lights to turn green despite the fact that there are no cars approaching? No one in my country would wait in that situation." popped up in the discussion.
Meanwhile in the intermediate level classes, students read the news article about physical punishment incident that happened at a high school in Osaka recently and exchanged opinions about the case.
We heard them talk about how things are in their own countries, such as...
"In China teachers do not scold students in front of others. They do when there is a certain level of privacy but they seldom have physical punishment in school." "In US there is a risk that you would be sued just by having a physical touch so physical punishment is out of question!" "In Korea teachers smack kids' hand with a ruler as punishment. If they hit with their own hands that would be considered bad, but if they use rulers we would feel that it is because they care." "In Malaysia teachers practice physical punishment on male students but they don't do it on female students" "That's totally not fair!"
We believe that this was an opportunity for everyone to talk and know about things that are different from his/her own country's culture and custom.
We would like to show our deep gratitude to all the Japanese guests who came all the way to share their time and perspectives with students, thank you so much!
|
