Tutor training
May. 1st, 2004 06:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
icarusToday we had an all-day Tutor training class (the first of two weekends -- yipe! They didn't tell me that).
Interesting story from our teacher. She's from China, but unexpectedly she was raised Muslim (her mother's family was Buddhist). Islam is not the first thing that leaps to mind when you think "China." Yes, I did know that a lot of minority religions, Christianity, Islam, Shinto, were allowed into China during the time of Kublai Khan and Marco Polo; and then later more were absorbed via the expansionism of Ming dynasty into Korea and Japan.
But it surprised me. I somehow assumed that the minority religions were pretty well quashed by the Communist party. After all, the Communist party is doing a beautiful job of obliterating the shrouded origins of Zen Buddhism (the fact that the origins of Zen in China are not clear gives fodder to those Buddhists in my tradition who claim Zen is not quite Buddhist) grinding the historical evidence up like so many dragon bones.
It's more and more obvious that we really don't know what China is today. There's such a huge gap between what's said by a government, its actions, and the actual internal culture. The multi-faceted true voices of the country are too chaotic to be able to figure out "which one is Chinese?" It's scary to think that just as we believe that the Chinese political leaders represent China, the rest of the world must think George Bush represents America.
In fact, that's a horrible thought.
One of the points she brought up was the sheer unfamiliarity of the US when she came over here. The same way I missed American food in India (french fries... pizza... chocolate ice cream...) she missed seeing mosques; (the contrast is a little embarrassing, but after all, I was in a Buddhist community). She even went looking for one up in Greenwood, but it didn't have the usual towers and so she drove right by without recognising it.
In China she was an exceptional student in English and in that typical arbitrary way of teenagers everywhere, she decided "okay then, I'll teach English." *shrug*
On arrival in the US she found all of her textbook-learned English was useless. She couldn't really speak. I've heard this over and over again with people educated in all sorts of languages, and experienced it myself in Germany. The typical methods of teaching don't help people to acquire the language. It's like learning about music without ever picking up an instrument; it's all theory.
Culture had a much bigger impact on the understanding of language than you'd think. There was a great quote from Winston Brembeck: "To know another's language and not his culture is a good way to make a fluent fool one's self." At one point she asked where she could by groceries, and people kept telling her to go there the 'safe way.' She asked for another option and was told other odd things, QFC, Larry's -?? It took a while before she realized people here don't say 'the market' but name the specific store: SAFEWAY.
So learning a language is not really 'learning a language,' becuase language encompasses so much more. It's absorbing the entirety of a culture.
What else is language, but the symbolic representation of culture?
Anthropologists say that the great leap forward from hominid animal to human was the invention of language. Suddenly, when language was created, so was art and all the variations of regional customs and culture. Before the invention of language hominids from China to Europe to South Africa used the same Aschulean axes and Levallier tools, decorated nothing, and varied no more than a tiger in New York varies from a tiger in Bhutan. Burial traditions, religion, all of it comes from language.
I find myself somewhat intimidated.
Interesting story from our teacher. She's from China, but unexpectedly she was raised Muslim (her mother's family was Buddhist). Islam is not the first thing that leaps to mind when you think "China." Yes, I did know that a lot of minority religions, Christianity, Islam, Shinto, were allowed into China during the time of Kublai Khan and Marco Polo; and then later more were absorbed via the expansionism of Ming dynasty into Korea and Japan.
But it surprised me. I somehow assumed that the minority religions were pretty well quashed by the Communist party. After all, the Communist party is doing a beautiful job of obliterating the shrouded origins of Zen Buddhism (the fact that the origins of Zen in China are not clear gives fodder to those Buddhists in my tradition who claim Zen is not quite Buddhist) grinding the historical evidence up like so many dragon bones.
It's more and more obvious that we really don't know what China is today. There's such a huge gap between what's said by a government, its actions, and the actual internal culture. The multi-faceted true voices of the country are too chaotic to be able to figure out "which one is Chinese?" It's scary to think that just as we believe that the Chinese political leaders represent China, the rest of the world must think George Bush represents America.
In fact, that's a horrible thought.
One of the points she brought up was the sheer unfamiliarity of the US when she came over here. The same way I missed American food in India (french fries... pizza... chocolate ice cream...) she missed seeing mosques; (the contrast is a little embarrassing, but after all, I was in a Buddhist community). She even went looking for one up in Greenwood, but it didn't have the usual towers and so she drove right by without recognising it.
In China she was an exceptional student in English and in that typical arbitrary way of teenagers everywhere, she decided "okay then, I'll teach English." *shrug*
On arrival in the US she found all of her textbook-learned English was useless. She couldn't really speak. I've heard this over and over again with people educated in all sorts of languages, and experienced it myself in Germany. The typical methods of teaching don't help people to acquire the language. It's like learning about music without ever picking up an instrument; it's all theory.
Culture had a much bigger impact on the understanding of language than you'd think. There was a great quote from Winston Brembeck: "To know another's language and not his culture is a good way to make a fluent fool one's self." At one point she asked where she could by groceries, and people kept telling her to go there the 'safe way.' She asked for another option and was told other odd things, QFC, Larry's -?? It took a while before she realized people here don't say 'the market' but name the specific store: SAFEWAY.
So learning a language is not really 'learning a language,' becuase language encompasses so much more. It's absorbing the entirety of a culture.
What else is language, but the symbolic representation of culture?
Anthropologists say that the great leap forward from hominid animal to human was the invention of language. Suddenly, when language was created, so was art and all the variations of regional customs and culture. Before the invention of language hominids from China to Europe to South Africa used the same Aschulean axes and Levallier tools, decorated nothing, and varied no more than a tiger in New York varies from a tiger in Bhutan. Burial traditions, religion, all of it comes from language.
I find myself somewhat intimidated.
