Situations Explanations and recommendations

Students stress out when asked to introduce themselves at the very beginning

of the first class

Inadequate language skills and lack of preparation will be laughed at –face losing.Give time & use ice-breaking games

In a silent classroom no one wants to be the first one talking in the class/ present their ideas.

“ First tweet first shot” Students saving their face by avoid being the first. Demonstrate examples with detailed instructions

Teacher asks students ‘Do you understand’, they all nodded although seem confused.

Saying no is disrespecting teacher’s efforts and skills; students saying yes is saving teachers face. Rephrase and explain again regardlessly.

Teacher distribute different comments on two different students’ answers – “OK”/ “ Great answer”

The student whose answer is ‘Ok’ lost face and is discouraged to speak. Follow up with further discussion and more comments than a word.

Students are afraid to ask questions after class/ making appointment to talk to teachers

In China students are only called to talk by teachers when they make mistakes. State the purpose clearly and make yourself accessible.

Teachers have difficulties getting effective/ constructive/ critical feedbacks from students.

Students try to save teachers face avoiding mentioning the flaws; also worried about the face loss will jeopardize their relationship so they won’t get good marks. Anonymous feedback cards with optional questions.

Qi (Eddy) Song

Brock University MEd Candidate

Recommendations

My ExperiencesThe face concept has always been a conflicting holding for me. However I didn’t realize the uniqueness and

complexity of it until I was posited in a culture setting where such concept is in little to none existence. I have been experiencing countless uneasy face threatening situations ever since I came to North America and started to interact with local people. The awkwardness, confusion and depression had followed me in daily functions. Same stories are told by all my fellow Chinese International students. As a Chinese immigrant who has a good understanding of the two utterly different cultural context, I find the ‘unusual’ quite Chinese students in class are understandable- they are saving face for themselves. In addition, students know they will have a good chance to create a face losing situation for teachers by simply giving teachers suggestions to deal with the silent class so they keep it to themselves. In this case, ‘face’ is not only the origin of the problem, but also a hinder placed in the solution path. The quality of communication will be hard to improve if nothing is done to break the circle.

It is specially difficult for newly arrived Chinese international students to speak up and break the silence. In the beginning of their study abroad, they are observers seeking to find protocols, boundaries and limits. Most of them take the measurement to avoid any interactions or take the safest way to minimized the face loss threat. At this point, teachers with good comprehension of the face concept will provide the students a comfortable learning environment and create a positive feedback and improvement mechanism.

The Politeness Theory Brown & Levinson( 1978) state that every individual has two types of face, positive and negative. They define positive face as the individual’s desire that one wants be appreciated in social interaction, and negative face as the individual’s desire for freedom of action and freedom from imposition. The theory assume that being polite therefore consists of attempting to save face for another. On the basis of these assumptions, three main strategies for performing speech acts are distinguished: positive politeness, negative politeness and off-record politeness.

References

Contact

AbstractChinese international students have quickly become a major fixture in North American Universities over several decades. Their strong, unique, complicated cultural background is fundamentally different from a cross cultural perspective. This paper will illustrate the key differences between east and west culture in the classroom. The harmonious concept of face is defined and applied within a western context and suggestions are given to help western educators understand and implement strategic teaching approaches in ‘silent’ classrooms.

IntroductionThis paper is aiming to help the western Educators to comprehend and apply the concept of face to assist their teaching and cross cultural interaction with Chinese students in the classroom. The application of an alternative western version of the concept of the face theory, the politeness theory will aid readers to obtain a holistic view of “Face”.

Cell:647-894-2307Email: qsongpro@gmail.com

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Coggin, W. O., & Coggin, B. F. (2001). Soyou want to work in China. Technical

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