Published: 2022-02-08
Updated: 2022-03-22
This first example is about teaching small groups of professionals, identifying the most important challenges and how to handle them.
From the beginning it was clear that this was going to be chaotic; a group of three or four young women wanted to take English lessons with me at their German company. And, at our first meeting I knew things were not going to be easy, and scheduling was only the first hurdle that had to be cleared. Two women had come to our first meeting which started by them making excuses about one of them not being able to come due to a business trip and the other not having decided yet whether she even wanted to join the group.
I never even got a chance to ask any questions with all the excuse-making.
When they had finally finished their seemingly rehearsed “speech” I asked how I could help them, what did they need and want to concentrate on in their lessons with me? I had noticed that their English was already pretty good and from the first few sentences it was clear that they were upper intermediate level even if both present were not the same linguistically speaking. The one who did the most talking was more confident but lacked fluency and some vocabulary, while the other one was quite her opposite – she appeared submissive to the first one but had a better command of her English and pronounced very much more clearly than the other.
I asked if I could take notes as they told me what they would like to practice, which they agreed to. Both said they’d need more oral practice since they had actually learned and even studied English at school and at university. Since they had also learned and used German quite extensively, their English had fallen behind and so they’d decided to take a group course with me.
I agreed that working in a small group would be a very good idea because I would concentrate on discussion and speaking practice in our lessons and asked if they could try to convince the fourth person to join as that would make simulated business talk situations easy to do. I told them I would offer reading materials we would read aloud together, for pronunciation and vocabulary work in class which would be suitable for debating afterwards. I showed them examples of a language magazine I use which is a bimonthly periodical specifically created for German learners who need to practice and enhance their English skills. It was in my eyes perfect for their situation since they, all four of them apparently, spoke German too. A further advantage of this magazine is that articles are offered at three different difficulty levels and typical vocabulary to the topic is underlined and translated into German in a vocab-box at the bottom of each page, so exactly right for my hopefully new clients.
They each paged through the two magazines I had brought to the meeting and immediately agreed saying they had never seen anything like this material, had never met anyone like me who was willing to cater to their needs before and were looking forward to getting started since all of them had already received the okays from their bosses.
Now, for us westerners, that would mean several things; they would take care of the organizational details, like contacting with their HR department to deal with the booking and payment of their course, they would talk to the other one or two members of the group and would get back to me within one or two days at most. No, that is not how things went.
Firstly, the potentially fourth person was, as it turned out, not willing to participate which only became apparent after a further week’s wait. Secondly, with the budget they had collectively which results in a certain number of lessons and the limited time I would still be in Beijing, I tried to convince them that we should meet two times per week. Thirdly, after a while they finally let me know that their bosses would not allow two times per week even though their lessons would be during their lunch breaks. Here I must clarify that the lunch break is nearly a holy thing which is taken very seriously and is celebrated almost ritualistically, and I was asking them to consider giving up or somehow rearranging their eating schedule to take English lessons. How could I?
As the next days and then weeks progressed it was becoming more and more chaotic and schedule suggestions on their part kept changing from one day to the next. I thought I had made sufficiently clear that I could not accommodate them immediately at noontimes, two times a week, because I had another two-person group who were just finishing up their booked lessons with me. So, I could offer to start with once a week immediately and then three weeks later we could meet two times per week.
The two times per week suggestion was becoming a problem I didn’t really think would be an issue.
I have been introduced to an amazing coping mechanism since I started working with my Chinese customers; if there seems to be a problem at first, just wait! It is as if they think that if they ignore the problem long enough, it will go away or solve itself: It’s quite innocent, isn’t it, in our eyes, but it seems to work for many people here. This is of course in reality not some endearing characteristic of the Chinese, but an example of one of the nine dimensions of culture as defined by the GLOBE Project, known as uncertainty avoidance. Having or displaying low uncertainty avoidance means that a society or an individual of that society sees uncertainty as a normal feature of life and accepts it as it comes. A person feels comfortable in ambiguous situations and with unfamiliar risks. So, in many cases I have experiences so far, my clients are not avoiding a problem, they are avoiding dealing with it – someone else will take care of it, someone who is higher up in hierarchy, the boss. Accepting hierarchical structures as given which are to be respected at all times happens to be another of the nine dimensions, known as power distance.
Adding to this is another characteristic which stems from the Chinese language as well as the principles of Confucius and that is that one does not show any kind of superiority to others, or suggest anything too directly, for fear of causing loss of face to that person. Therefore, the language is based on very indirect communication which causes problems for us westerners when we are trying to schedule things and need decisions made.
I decided I would have to go all “rogue western” in this matter if I ever wanted to get this course started. Since I couldn’t allow much more time to be wasted, I contacted the group again and asked how things were progressing.
Now came coping mechanism number two. In our first lesson together in the group of three that had decided on a first appointment date and time, I was confronted in a rather aggressive way as I had rarely experienced before. The group was actually trying to force me into giving them the days and time slots they wanted, completely ignoring the fact that there were other clients who already had that time slot. I felt like I was on trial for neglecting these new clients and one woman even said, at the end of that first session we had together, that “after all, they were the client, and someone would have to try to accommodate them.” The comment wasn’t geared toward me so much as toward the training organizer at the German Chamber of Commerce through whose hands all the coordination of these courses run.
I emailed my course organizer at the German Chamber and warned him ahead that there was trouble brewing on the horizon. Not an hour later did I receive an answer from my Mr. Ji that the group had suddenly decided they wanted another teacher – problem solved by avoidance.
I was not going to let this happen so, pretending not to know this, I emailed my three-lady group and suggested they divide into a one-person and two-person group and explained that it would be easier to accommodate and schedule them. The one woman was willing to take lessons after hours and the other two would under no circumstances do so.
We actually managed to meet with all three ladies together one time, which is when I knew they would have to be divided as I suggested. So, the next time we met, I had class with the one woman and two days later with the two ladies and suddenly there was no more talk of wanting another teacher and the whole procedure took only four weeks to get underway and then another two weeks to get these three women sorted and separated into their respective courses.
By Helen A. Stoemmer
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