2/13/21; Week 6: Response to Personal Space Differences

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 Personal Space Differences 

in a TESOL classroom



Imagine the following situation, you, the teacher, are in the classroom and approach a student who is struggling to understand the content taught that day. You come closer to your student to see his notebook and show willingness to help him. However, he steps back away from you. What would you think? You may think he is ashamed, or he is sad, or even he is not like you. Well, this situation may happen because different cultures have different personal space levels.


Regarding this issue, Professor John J. Ivers from BYU-Idaho University says that we "have to be very careful [because] there is some very serious room for misinterpretation". The zone distance can vary from one culture to another. 



For instance, in my culture, it's very common to hug and kiss people when you first meet them. However, for some cultures, like in Germany, this seems very inappropriate. Personal spaces are associated with the population density of the area a person lives, and other cultural factors. In order to avoid misinterpretation and inaccurate assumptions we, as English teachers, have to be aware of how the zone distances can vary between cultures. When we are aware of those differences we can understand that a behavior that could be interpreted as rude can rapidly be changed in our minds and be seen as "It's just the way he/she was taught to react". This awareness can avoid hatred and disrespect towards people from every nation. 


In a real classroom, we need to be attentive to the behavior of our students and respect their boundaries. Even in the same country, we can find different cultures and different levels of personal spaces. When we show that we understand and respect our student's personal space we open space for confidence and love, and this can totally influence their learning progress. As we notice a student is not comfortable somehow we need to do a good analyzes of everything around him/her. That's why is so important to strive to really know our students, their background, motives, and needs.


What practices would you suggest to get to know the personal spaces of the students?



References:

https://video.byui.edu/media/05+Personal+Space+Differences/0_yz4lk5f0

https://westsidetoastmasters.com/resources/book_of_body_language/chap9.html


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