Journal of Research & Scholarly Output 2006 - Grimsby Institute of ...

seen as the senior person, differences in
cultural courtesy, deference and
unwillingness to contradict can inhibit the
free transfer of information. Consequently,
students have to be encouraged to join in
and the tutor has to create the right culture
to ensure learning.
“In conventional lectures there is little
interaction, whilst the seminars should be
student led. There has been an
understandable reluctance to join in
discussions and it has taken about a whole
term to make this a normal practice, but with
patience and encouragement it does
happen”.
The tutor needs to convince the students
that open discussion would be appreciated
and beneficial to the course and is a
teaching strategy used to develop their
understanding. However, there may have to
be a trade off with adopting this strategy.
Until the students are relaxed about being
questioned and are comfortable with this
expectation, the tutor may have to consider
changes to teaching style. It may be that for
a particular student cohort or particular
student a particular teaching strategy may
never be appropriate!
It was contended, that recognition of this
point helped with the issue of classroom
management. Some tutors observed that
international students often have a tendency
to repeatedly hold conversations in their
native language to purposely exclude the
tutor. As one tutor observed, “during my
first lesson with international students I was
failing to engage them, they then started
talking between themselves, thus disrupting
the rest of the session”. Also within the
context of engaging students and
classroom management, it appears that
where the tutor stands is important to note.
In China, teachers stand at the front of class
and don’t walk around – conventional
lecture style; walking about is very different
from what Chinese students are used to.
The concept of walking about, into the
student body metaphorically speaking,
could be considered intimidating for some
students and impact on learning transfer.
Including into lesson planning activities that
have a link to what they are interested in and
what they can relate to was considered an
appropriate tactic. For example:
“I included statistics and information
regarding what is happening in China into
the lesson, this surprised the learners as
they commented ‘wow, Chinese
information,’ created an immediate interest
and engaged the learners”.
Making allowances for differences in the
international student’s learning style.
It appears that with the Chinese there are
definite differences in learning styles. They
are used to working through text from cover
to cover and expect to be ‘spoon fed’.
Which text book are we using and, starting
at chapter 1 appears to be the mindset.
Colleagues had to introduce the concept of
lectures and seminars and point out to
students that it was not necessary to read
text books from cover to cover. They appear
to have difficulty in grasping that you pick
out what you need.
“‘I found that their learning style had been
very didactic and the seminar set-up was
alien to them, therefore I continued to check
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