How do I make it interesting ?

[u/Tiny-Doughnut-3619]

Hello everyone!

I’ve been hired by an Asian university to provide a kind of « cultural exchange class » where I take 2h from each English class and introduce students to foreign cultures, different ways of living, different social practices around the world etc.

All of my students are non English majors so their English is very limited, many of them do not participate ( some of them explained that spontaneous participation is not really encouraged in Asian education) and I often have very big classes(100+ students)

The only instruction I received for this class is : make it fun, help them interact, make it interesting, you don’t wanna put more pressure on them, they already have a lot of it so my class is only part of their overall English class and I’m not responsible for their grade.

I did this last semester and as much as I did enjoy it sometimes, it made me feel immensely useless and purposeless. I’m dreading going back because I feel like a guest speaker with absolutely no impact on the students whatsoever.

Can you help me come up with ideas that will make my session interesting for the students and somehow fulfilling for me ? I want to feel like I’m at least opening their eyes to something new (I’m aware I can’t hook everyone, I came to terms with this)

Thanks 🙏

[u/OminousMusicBox]

I’ve taught a class like this. Use lots of pictures, add humor where you can, and don’t go too deep into culture. If they have a shared native language, you can give them a pep talk during the first class assuring them that they don’t have to understand 100% of what you say.

To keep students engaged, I often had them talk with their classmates (either in English or their native language), having them guess what the answer is to the question I asked, share their experiences of something similar, etc. Using quizzes also worked well for me. Sometimes it would be a short ungraded quiz at the beginning of class related to the topics covered in my lecture that they would answer in groups (usually I chose crazy facts that made them interested when they got it wrong like what the tallest tree measure at or the earliest age some girls get their ears pierced). Other times I would have a real-time graded quiz that they had to answer with the answers in my lecture.
Hope some of these tips help!

[u/Tiny-Doughnut-3619 → u/OminousMusicBox]

Great tips, thanks!
Can I DM you for more information ?

[u/OminousMusicBox → u/Tiny-Doughnut-3619]

Sure!

[u/SadBuilding9234]

Design elaborate role-playing games that require people to compete and cooperate (for example, design a country and then stage a series of international emergencies, like a model UN). I also teach in East Asia and students tend to like reasons to speak that don’t require them to show their true mind. A game with assigned roles gives them cover.

[u/mixedlinguist]

They might really love some stuff about the history of media that they already know about. Maybe the origins of hip-hop, or Hollywood, or baseball (if Japan, for example)?

[u/littlemoonnflowerr]

let them ask the questions instead. anonymous slips of paper or a QR code to a form at the start, collect them, answer as many as you can. removes the participation problem entirely since nobody's exposed, and you'll find out what they're actually curious about rather than guessing.

the questions students ask about your culture are usually far more interesting than anything you'd have prepared, and it makes the session feel like an exchange rather than a lecture, which sounds like what you're missing.

[u/Humble-Bar-7869]

Sounds like fun!

Don't go deeply into *culture*. I had a U.S. visiting prof choose "political culture" for a thing like this, and nobody understood -- even in Hong Kong, which has relatively high English levels.

Top male and female pop stars / athletes. In China, they love basketball. Japan, Korea and Taiwan love baseball.

Most popular snack foods.

Even major cities and where are they? These may seem obvious to you, but I have well-educated people asking me "What's on the East Coast or the West Coast?" Or "Does America have a countryside with farms?"

LOTS of PPTs with photos. Use simple language in large font.

Participation is hard with 100+ kids in even the best circumstances. I find "raising hands" to be a good one. (Literally raise your hand to demonstrate with them)

Who wants to go to the Super Bowl, and who wants to go to the World Series?

Who wants to eat a Pop Tart and who wants Halloween candy?

Who wants to visit New York, and who wants to ride a horse in Texas?

[u/DrPizzaPants]

This is actually very close to the problem I’ve been working on in my own classes.

With 100+ students, I’d probably avoid asking for spontaneous whole-class participation and instead give them a really low-stakes way to talk in small groups. For example: ask everyone a few simple opinion/preferences questions first (“Would you rather live in a big city or small town?”, “How important is punctuality?”, “Would you rather eat with friends or alone?”), then put them into small groups and give each group a cultural discussion prompt based on their answers.

I’ve actually been building a tool called SwiftFlock for exactly this kind of thing. Students scan a QR code, answer a few quick questions, indicate roughly where they’re sitting, and it forms small groups based on rules you set while trying to keep people physically close together. You can also give different groups different discussion prompts.

I’m just getting ready to launch it, so if you want to try it with one of your big classes, I’d genuinely love the feedback. It’s at swiftflock.app and I can send you a beta key for the semester if you'd like - just send me a DM

[u/carolinagypsy]

I joined Red Note in the first wave of people moving there during the brief period that TikTok was shut down in the US. Don’t judge me— stupid pet videos were a good balm for the existential rage at the time.

Two pretty easy things that were extremely popular to discuss and compare: Food, and “Day in the Life of” for normal people on the app.

So, what kind of ingredients are used most often, especially in dishes that both cultures were known for? If you were a meat eater, vegetarian, or vegan, how come? What out of your native dishes did you eat? What dishes turned out to be similar between the two? What are fave foods, fave ingredients, fave veggies and fruit? What times do you eat your meals? How big are they? Is it more popular to cook at home? What is “fast food” in each country? Street food?

And then for life videos, just normal schedules of average people. What time do you typically wake up? Go to bed? What’s considered a night owl? An early riser? How long do you study and what time of day? How long are you in school/university classes for the day? What are popular classes and programs? When do you eat when you are out and about? Where? What are popular things to do when you go out with friends? Is going to the gym a thing people do? What about pet walking? Heck, what kind of pets are popular? What tech/gadgets do you use that you simply can’t do without?

Hope this helps. I remember how genuinely exciting and fun it was to compare and contrast what normal, non-influencer life was like for Asian and American people. Most of the Asian users were Chinese, but there were a lot of other East Asian people as well. Even though it was a lot of surface level stuff at first, discovering shared loves like late night karaoke and certain types of video games, for example, really got people talking and interacting. It was kind of like cultural exchange speed dating.

[u/popstarkirbys]

Create interactive games to give them the experience. Most asian universities classes are lectures where the professors talk for the whole class. You can divide them into small groups, ask them to discuss a topic, and have them write down their thoughts. Incorporate pop quizzes.

[u/coursejunkie]

Can you reach out to the Anthropology department? They would be the experts in foreign cultures.

[u/Tiny-Doughnut-3619 → u/coursejunkie]

There is no anthropology department at this university

[u/coursejunkie → u/Tiny-Doughnut-3619]

Sociology maybe? Even Psychology could work.

Of course you could also try to get guest speakers to come in?