Remember in first grade when you didn’t need to speak to make friends? Well coming to China I went back to first grade. From the first day here, my biggest challenge has been communication, which made making friends and socializing very different. As we grow older we get more and more used to making friends and building relationship through speaking. However, as I came to China knowing less than five words in Chinese, I had to massively change my techniques.
During the first week or so here the conversations with the teachers were always the same awkward small talk “where are you from?”, “what do you teach?”… With the children it was a lot of blank stares when I opened my mouth and most of them would be extremely quiet. At my attempt of speaking Chinese the kids would focus on correcting my pronunciation and when I spoke in English they looked at each other and feel silent. This changed quickly. Even though many times when people speak to me I have no idea what they are saying I understand the message they are trying to get across. I learnt very fast to derive things from the context and to look for clues such as body gestures or squeeze the meaning out of the words that they said which I understood. This sometimes leads to confusion as I misunderstand what is being said but it works surprisingly well for the most part. In order to understand the content of what is being said I take out my best friend: Pleco (a Chinese-English dictionary) and translate the key words in a sentence.
Having said this, it is often extremely difficult and frustrating to have such a massive language barrier. When I hear of the relationship the Chinese speaking volunteers have made with the students it makes me feel like I’m missing out on a big aspect of the students’ personality. My relationship with my students is inevitably very different from the ones other volunteers have. I cannot “bond” with the students through the content of my words but rather the way I present the things I’m saying. In the first couple of weeks it was very useful doing physical activities with the kids. Once you begin to have shared experiences with people one can stop relying on the meaning on the words. I built my relationship through the kids through playing handclaps and doing things that don’t rely on speaking. Even though I wish I could have a more personal relationship with the students and learn more about them, I definitely feel that I have great bonds with a lot of the students in my class.
I have reached the conclusion that in our lives, communicating with people is heavily dependent on what you make people feel when you express yourself. Especially with children, it is easy to build relationships by making them laugh, which can be as simple as making funny faces. With teachers it can be a bigger struggle, but what I have found most useful is to find common interests. For example, some of the female teachers like clothes, so complementing their dress or shoes can start new conversations that don’t require very complicated vocabulary. Similarly, playing volleyball also helped me to interact with a few of the male teachers.
All in all, I have definitely felt like a dumb person at times, unable to express myself, but it has really surprised me the amount of emotion and feeling that can be communicated without the use of words.
During the first week or so here the conversations with the teachers were always the same awkward small talk “where are you from?”, “what do you teach?”… With the children it was a lot of blank stares when I opened my mouth and most of them would be extremely quiet. At my attempt of speaking Chinese the kids would focus on correcting my pronunciation and when I spoke in English they looked at each other and feel silent. This changed quickly. Even though many times when people speak to me I have no idea what they are saying I understand the message they are trying to get across. I learnt very fast to derive things from the context and to look for clues such as body gestures or squeeze the meaning out of the words that they said which I understood. This sometimes leads to confusion as I misunderstand what is being said but it works surprisingly well for the most part. In order to understand the content of what is being said I take out my best friend: Pleco (a Chinese-English dictionary) and translate the key words in a sentence.
Having said this, it is often extremely difficult and frustrating to have such a massive language barrier. When I hear of the relationship the Chinese speaking volunteers have made with the students it makes me feel like I’m missing out on a big aspect of the students’ personality. My relationship with my students is inevitably very different from the ones other volunteers have. I cannot “bond” with the students through the content of my words but rather the way I present the things I’m saying. In the first couple of weeks it was very useful doing physical activities with the kids. Once you begin to have shared experiences with people one can stop relying on the meaning on the words. I built my relationship through the kids through playing handclaps and doing things that don’t rely on speaking. Even though I wish I could have a more personal relationship with the students and learn more about them, I definitely feel that I have great bonds with a lot of the students in my class.
I have reached the conclusion that in our lives, communicating with people is heavily dependent on what you make people feel when you express yourself. Especially with children, it is easy to build relationships by making them laugh, which can be as simple as making funny faces. With teachers it can be a bigger struggle, but what I have found most useful is to find common interests. For example, some of the female teachers like clothes, so complementing their dress or shoes can start new conversations that don’t require very complicated vocabulary. Similarly, playing volleyball also helped me to interact with a few of the male teachers.
All in all, I have definitely felt like a dumb person at times, unable to express myself, but it has really surprised me the amount of emotion and feeling that can be communicated without the use of words.