Blog Post 3, Kathleen

The "Possible Transfer-Based Problems You Might Observe When Working with Chinese Students" reading was very eye-opening to me. We're totally at a disadvantage when working with international students because they're very familiar with our language, but we're not at all familiar with theirs. I had a Chinese student I wrote about in my last blog post who was having trouble with the past tense because, she told me, there was no past tense in Chinese. I didn't know in what sense exactly she meant that--since they must have a way of communicating that something happened in the past--so we couldn't get on entirely the same page with what problem she was having. Knowing that Chinese uses adverbs or word order to express the past sense is massively helpful.

I also found the "Crossing Cultures" reading to be helpful in considering this student. We read "Is This Kansas," an essay which takes its title from graffiti referencing the Wizard of Oz movie. In office hours we were discussing why she had missed the quiz question regarding the origination of the title and it finally occurred to me that she might not know the movie. After we talked, it turned out that she was familiar with the story, just not in English. I will now make more of an effort to consider what cultural context my international students might be missing in our readings and discussions.

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