© 1991 by Oxford University Press
Articles |
Confused encounters: differing expectations in the EAP classroom
Senior Lecturer at Ealing College, London, currently on a year's leave of absense at Exeter University School of Education where she is teaching Applied Linguistics. She first taught EFL in China during the cultural Revolution, and has subsequently taught in Japan, Hong Kong, and more recently again in China, as well as the UK. She has an MA in Linguistics for ELT from Lancaster University. Her particular interests are in cross-cultural communications and in socio-cultural issues in EAP.
This paper discusses the idea of culturally-specific norms of interaction and argues that where there is a mismatch between students' expectations and those of the staff, the students are likely to be judged negatively. Fred Erickson's ethnographic research on problems of cross-cultural interaction in school classrooms is considered with relevance to the ‘invisible culture’ of higher education. The paper then discusses particular examples of such problems drawn from students on Access and EAP courses and suggests some possible solutions. It is argues that staff need to become aware of their own cultural norms and then accommodate to the interactional styles of the learners. At the same time, they should be explicit about the interactional demands of their classes.