Differences of Culture

Today in class we learnt about the similarities and differences between life styles in Japan and New Zealand. We talked about washing clothes, eating dinner, buses, TV, taking a shower, and learning English. It was a good discussion with lots of vocabulary being learnt, but that it is difficult to explain these differences. I firstly wanted the students to realise that there are different ways of doing things - even washing the dishes is done differently in both countries. I let the students speak in groups in Japanese, so that they could understand all of the situations in their individual homestay environments. The second aspect of teaching this kind of content is trying to get the students to explain in a conversational way what the situation is like in Japan compared to New Zealand. Of course, this is going to take time, but a valuable aspect of learning about culture, which will hopefully have the added bonus of empowering the students.