Teaching Australian to our Japanese guests
This week, Stage 5 were host to 32 Japanese students who are visiting Australia from their homes near Hiroshima, Japan. They arrived at college with the purpose of spending the day immersed in Australian college life and practising English in an everyday context. It was really interesting watching the unfolding friendships between students of similar ages from two hugely different cultures.
To break the ice we set up mixed groups, students from both cultures, who together were encouraged to teach one another about their countries and their cultures. What struck me to begin with was the tentative, rather awkward interactions between some of our students and our visitors. To me as an adult, this was a fun, interesting, perfectly normal thing to do. I asked many of our CCSC students who looked worried, “Why is this difficult? You have your iPads for images to share, you even have Google translate to communicate, just go for it!” The interactions between the students may have started slowly, but when a Kahoot game written in both English and Japanese was set to test knowledge and ultimately each other’s ‘teaching’ skills, things warmed up! CCSC students had lots of fun teaching Aussie slang such as ‘budgie smugglers’, ‘she’ll be right’, ‘boardies’ and ‘thongs’!
The biggest clincher was when we finished in class and went out to play ‘1 touch 1 bounce’, the age-old favourite that our students play relentlessly in their break time. The Japanese students loved it. No words were needed. Our students were happy, the visiting students were happy. It just goes to show that the power of play is truly what brings people together.
Instagram friendships were made. Hopefully the Japanese students enjoyed their day with us. They certainly left smiling, as were we; perhaps happy that we had imparted some of our Aussie ‘charm’ to them.
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