Activities for my students: June 2016

Today marks exactly one year since I came to London! When I made the decision to leave Singapore, it was incredibly exciting. Soon, though, I had to face the challenge of experiencing a different way of life. It hasn't always been easy, living on (literally) the other side of the world. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that people who have grown up in different places have different ways of behaving, thinking and expressing themselves.

Before I set off on my adventure, I had certain images of English people: polite, serious people, always drinking tea, obsessed with the weather These things aren’t exactly false, but they're only the tip of the iceberg. I soon realised that people's behaviour wasn't always consistent with my preconceptions.

Let's start with the things I love. London is a big, bustling, cosmopolitan city. So, in that respect, things weren't totally new to me. There are lots of things to do all year round and I can go to museums, musicals and plays whenever I want. Also, because of where London is, I can easily just pop over to Paris or Brussels for a weekend getaway.

But after going through the ‘tourist phase’ of finding everything completely new and exciting, more and more things started to surprise me. I discovered the ‘iceberg’ hidden under the water and started to gain some insight into British culture. For example, some of the TV programmes and newspapers were a bit of a shock. Sometimes it seems that, in the media, anything goes. The English sense of humour is really interesting, too. A lot of the time, it's really self-deprecating humour. Sometimes it can be quite obvious and crude (and not at all polite). At other times, you don't really know if they're being sarcastic or being serious. It took me a while to get used to that and read between the lines. But it helped to watch a lot of chat shows and comedies (English people love watching TV — in fact, that's what a lot of their conversation and cultural references are about). In fact, these programmes are a rich source of information about the British and the British way of life.

All this got me thinking about culture — not just in England, but everywhere. It's like a kind of social glue, it holds society together. We learn about the culture of our own society in a very natural way as we grow up — it's the ‘dos’ and ‘don'ts’ about how we treat people, what is acceptable behaviour.

The aspects of culture you can see are based on those values and beliefs that you can't. It will take a long time to understand those deeply held values and beliefs because you have to notice them slowly and work them out.

My advice to anyone going to a new country is this: don't be afraid to try out new things. That's the whole point of going and how you gain experience. But before you go, check out good websites for information about the place and get a good guidebook. When you’re there, explore it as much as you can — get out and make friends with ‘real’ people! You'll find that the more you do, the more you'll gain confidence.

Paste the text (ask the teacher for details) into this website and look for important collocations:
http://www.wordandphrase.info/

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Formal/informal

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Friday 24 June 2016

EYTP Writing

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