18 February 2020
Week 7 Differences
in Manners
In my husband’s
country it’s good to burp as loud as you can when you eat, and this means you
are happy with the meal. They also prefer to eat with their hands. When you
finish the food off your plate they will put more food on your plate. I have
learned to eat slowly, because I can not eat as much as they do. In England it’s very common in the home you
are visiting that the host fills your plate with food and gives it to you. I
don’t eat much, and they give me too much food. This is the way they do it and
I try to respect that or tell them there are certain foods I don’t eat.
A friend
of mine got upset at her children when they put their elbows on the table. She
was raised by her English parents. When her children were at my house, I told
them it did not bother me if the elbows were on the table. I had seen my Catholic
friends do this and I honestly thought it was a religious thing not to have the
elbows on the table. My friends were in the Latter-day Saint church. In Iceland
you take your shoes off when you enter someone’s home. This is very common in Europe.
Some homes have slippers you can use inside their homes.
It can be
stressful to students who are new in a school system to not be sure about what
is good manners or watch others being rude in the student’s opinion. I have come
across men from certain countries think I am in love with them because I am smiling,
I smile at people when I meet them. Be
careful with chewing gum in some countries. It’s illegal to chew gum in public
in Singapore. Once I entered the train in England. I sat across from two women
and said hello. One of the women looked at me with a snobbish look on her face.
I saw that and decided not to talk to her again. I lived in England at the time
and had never seen this before.
Many people have ended in jail in some countries because of being ignorant of what is appropriate in some countries. As teachers
we need to be aware of what makes the students uncomfortable and not force them
to do anything that makes them uncomfortable, like shaking hands. Don't assume the students have learned American ways of doing things, yet.
Hi Hera,
ReplyDeleteIt is important to recognized, what hard is to be stressed, when a student comes to a new school far from their culture ore subculturalism. This is the role play of a teacher to help this students to feel comfortable inside the classroom and in the whole school.