Addressing Cultural Differences

My chat cafe group is different than I expected because we spend a lot more time talking about cultural differences than working on speaking the English language correctly.  For some reason, I had pictured our group talking about vocab words and working on pronunciation.  Instead, we spend most of our discussions comparing life in the United States to life in China and Taiwan.  So far, some of our most interesting discussions have revolved around politics, religion, childhood activities, and sports.  So while I have not had the opportunity to address many linguistic differences in our group meetings, I have had plenty of experience talking about cultural differences.  Part of me wishes I knew more about Xin's and Kyle's cultures before becoming part of this group.  For example, I had heard growing up, probably from some middle school boy trying to impress everyone with his knowledge, that Chinese families could only have one child.  I never gave a lot of thought to this piece of information, letting it remain the back of my mind all these years as some urban legend.  As a result, I ended up feeling a little embarrassed when I asked Xin if she had any siblings and she answered no, her family couldn't have more than one child, because that piece of information was something I probably should have already known.  Our reading this week covered a lack of Asian students participating in class discussions, possibly as a result of anxiety about appearing as not very smart.  In some ways, I feel that anxiety when talking to my chat circle; I do not want them to think less of me for asking questions that they might consider "dumb."

Our conversation circles seem to be running smoothly.  We have finalized our group to four people, two facilitators and two participants, but due to exam schedules, we have often only had one student show up.  At the request of our group to watch a classic American movie, we watched Mean Girls, a film which is pretty much a staple in our generation's childhood.  The film is a satire on high schools, showing catty behavior by girls fighting over a boy; Kyle found the movie very entertaining.  Our conversation circles are fun and enjoyable, and something to look forward to each week.