Speaking with confidence

I'm currently teaching a course in spoken English for academic purposes. It has been really interesting and rewarding to watch how the students (who are all from non-English speaking backgrounds) develop in confidence, even just in the last 5 weeks since semester began. Every 2 weeks they have to record themselves reflecting on some feature of spoken discourse they've heard around them (or sometimes it might be on a set topic) and then upload it to the online class discussion forum.

In one of the tutorials recently, after getting a bit frustrated with their lack of verbal participation in class, I asked them if they felt more comfortable uploading their recording to the class forum than speaking in class, and they all said yes! It seems that speaking to a faceless, anonymous audience (from within the comfort of their own home) is less confronting for them than speaking in front of classmates in class.

As well as the recorded 'discourse diary', on the in-between weeks they also have to comment on two of their classmates' recordings from the previous week. This is also interesting, as they seem to be very happy to both encourage and critique their classmates in this mode, which I never see them doing in class.

I have been greatly encouraged to see the way they interact with each other online, and actually there is quite a good friendly atmosphere in class when I give them interaction activities to do in groups. It's only when I ask a general question of the whole class that most of the students feel uncomfortable being the one to speak. I hope they will be less reticent as the semester progresses. I realise it is a cultural difference as many of them are from China, where the teacher talks and the students listen, and if the teacher wants you to say something they will ask you directly. Hopefully we can come to an understanding by the end of semester.

Notes on a haircut

I always enjoy it when I'm in a situation where specialized and everyday discourse come into contact, seeing how the people involved negotiate the interaction so that they can make themselves understood.
For example, a few weeks ago I had a hairdresser appointment (Ed: I actually started writing a blog on it that week but my iPhone went cactus shortly after so I lost all the notes I had made). It was interesting because it was late on a Friday afternoon, just before closing time, and I was the only customer so all 3 staff members were talking to me and discussing my haircut.
In order to explain what I wanted or didn't want done to my hair, I used my own non-technical terms such as 'foof it up' and 'not like a curtain on my head'. They found my attempts to explain hairstyles amusing, but were able to understand what I meant and then used my terms for the rest of the procedure.
In service encounters like hairdressing appointments the domain of experience is quite everyday as far as the customer is concerned - their hair and its appearance. So modifying your use of technical terms when operating at the interface between experts and laypeople is a really useful thing to do.