A recent workshop I sat in struck me in various ways that I almost had a moment of epiphany, a learner’s realization. In that workshop one activity suddenly summoned up my past educational experiences and made me realize that even an unintended moment of communication may surprisingly impact an ESL audience in ways that evoke different cultural habits and thinking patterns that have long submerged into one holistic culture of interactions. Yet that remembrance resurfaced through an exchange based on mutually yet unconsciously kind intensions to get meanings crossed.  And it could happen in an ordinary daily life.

It may begin like this.  Early one morning, as usual, I sat in on one of my tutoring sessions to collect data for my WAC research project. Due to some personal issues the former tutor yielded the floor to the current one, who had to make up all that had been left undone with tutoring and in the meantime get to know the students and new topics of subsequent workshops. Roughly speaking, I sat in mainly for the purpose of observing students’ learning process in order to figure out how the tutoring sessions may be intergrated most effectively into the 2100 class. As usual still, I tried to jot down whatever things that would contribute to that understanding. As the workshop meandered half way through after we (or they) discussed evaluating sources for their research paper, the tutor gave each student an article and asked each to proceed to something very specific and share back.

That was the moment when I felt struck, the moment when all the accumulative effects materialized. He asked them to circle two words they didn’t understand, write two questions, two comments, and two critical marginal notes, the kind of exercise that belongs to conducting a research. What struck me, if never before, was the specificity of the exercise, the instructions. It certainly was not the first time in my life to hear of the instructions or do an exercise so specific; a large part of my past schoolings was taught by English-speaking teachers. And I think when I taught at City Tech I also tried to be specific and gave specific assignment (now when I come to think of it I really need to seriously reconsider that…). Nor did it seem unusual for me to hear people even while they were deliverying speeches use terms and expressions quite straightforward or personal–gesturing toward their friends, etc. However it has not struck me until that moment in the workshop that the kind of specificity and straightfowardness run counter to my Taiwanese/Chinese culture as a whole, which promotes generialization, ambiguity, and understanding through continuous internal workings and realization. That is, crucial things may get hinted at and left unsaid in order for the students to lumber up their mental muscle.

In this way my cultural upbringing encourages kids to think the unthinkable, to do something that goes beyond their age. Oftentimes interpersonal communication also becomes ambiguous since people are accustomed to referring to things in a roundabout way. If you look at a Chinese painting, for instance, a huge empty space may catch your attention; that’s where the meditation should fall. So the ambiguity is the underlying focus of communication and the inherent asthetics of a meditative culture.  In any event the exercise put forward in such a way in that workshop may appear quite natural to many of you and to me most of the time as I become more immersed in this culture; however, at times such as this one I was reminded yet once more of the differences of cultural habit and behaviour just in that seemingly ordinary endeavour, and was wondering if our presence has brought anything into this melting pot, not to mention just the take-out food. But overall, my feelings would be that the workshops I’ve sat in are like cultural enhancers or fusers. They serve as an interface bridging me, an ESL learner, and the new culture, also a mixed kind, in an interesting way. I have yet to find a chance to talk to the tutor about this and am quite curious whether the similar situation has dawned on any ESL students in those workshops.