Communication

The Communication video includes the following four topic areas:

Strategies for Communicating

(1) Pace
(2) Humour
(3) Using Examples
(4) Slang

Transcript

Pace

Student 1

I found it’s a little bit hard to follow the pace of the lecture while doing the first semester and the second semester at a uni, cause the pace sometimes is so fast that I cannot follow. As you can see, as an international student, I'm not [an] English speaker, so I need a little bit of time to think about how to say and how to know the things in English.

Student 2

Sometimes the lecturer can talk too fast and with a different accent it’s hard for me to get, but I guess yeah, trying to maybe, go to that lecturer, or talk to other students, [when] which as I said I’m not really clear what the lecturer mean of something like that, so yeah sometimes communication can be a problem to me

Mike Grenby,
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

One of the challenges that we as lecturers face when we are teaching international students is to make sure that they understand us, and the key to that is to speak slowly, to speak clearly and to vary our voice. Now it’s a challenge because I tend to speak far to quickly, I know my topic, I’m excited about my topic, I just haven’t got time to get all my words out, and I really have to work to speak more slowly and not make it sound like a record that is going too slow. One of the things that I use and one of the things that I teach my students, those of us, the students who also speak too quickly, is to pause between sentences. That does two things; one, it makes you slow down and two, it gives the students a chance to reflect on what you have just said and to understand the words and perhaps to make a few notes.

Humour

Student 3

Some of my teachers use humour once in a while. I think that also makes classes a lot more enjoyable cause you’re not just sitting there in a lecture for two hours thinking about other things.

Student 4

Sometimes the professor try to be humorous, try to use the sense of humour but I don’t get it because I’m not in this kind of environment, that’s a cultural thing. That makes me feel not fitting in, in this environment.

Student 5

I sometimes, I cannot get the joke in class, the teacher, they do a joke and I cannot get the joke “OK” and everyone starts to laugh, “OK”, but I have no idea of what happened.

Jonathon Sargeant,
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

Being the clown once in a while can actually help, if you feel silly, they feel strong.

Dr Amy Kenworthy-U’Ren,
Associate Professor Management, Faculty of Business, Technology and Sustainable Development

For example today we were talking about organisational commitment and there is one kind of commitment called continuance commitment where people take part in organisations because they have to and I joked, I made a joke, I said “listen I know a lot of you here in this class are here because of continuance commitment, right?. It’s a core class, you have to take. My job is to develop other kinds of commitment in you” and they all laughed, and they all loved it , so a little bit of humour can go a long way in making students comfortable.

Using Examples

Student 6

In my finance class my teacher has, kind of, done a study session for study abroad students, and she also when we are in class will go through and explain things that might have been already explained in the introductory course for our class, because it’s a more advanced level of finance, and she does it so that, things that the Australian or students who go here full-time might know, that we wouldn’t obviously know, then we’ll understand and be able to follow her.

Student 7

Sometimes when they say some example [it] isn’t just like Australian background, then they will give further explanations, "and all this means . . ." and making like international background of students [so that students] can understand and get what that means.

Student 8

Mostly at home it’s only about America, American people and here you learn about everybody, everybody’s culture every different country.

Professor Cynthia Fisher,
Head of Department (Management), Faculty of business, Technology and Sustainable Development

In teaching human resource management I’m finding that every class is a cross-cultural management class. Whatever we are talking about I might describe Australian and/or American practices but then I will ask the class “How is it done in your county?”

Professor Sudhir Kale,
Professor of Marketing, Faculty of Business, Technology and Sustainable Development

It also poses certain challenges in terms of the way you try to appeal to everybody, the way you try to make sense to everybody, and best of all you try to be entertaining and substantive to people of different educational backgrounds, life experiences, different cultures. So in that regard I would feel that in dealing with international students, the instructor’s job is to make them unlearn their conditioned responses by first making them aware of them and then proceeding to explain where these conditionings come from, not that one culture is necessarily right or another is necessarily wrong.

Slang

Student 9

The hardest thing I think is in the classroom some teachers use the Australian slang and or just the Australian thing, so international students cannot [be] involved in that.

Student 10

I feel like there is some slang that I kind of have to do like double-take and try to understand what they are saying. Sometimes they say something that means something completely different where we’re from.

Student 11

Suddenly I may fail to understand or to catch what they are talking about. I know a teacher means, or a teacher or Australian students they may just use the very colloquial language or something like the slang, idioms or something like that, which I could not understand at all.

Dr Jonathon Sargeant,
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

There is a lot of regular jargon that we use that we take for granted and words such as codswallop or fair dinkum, and things like that ,and I have had students from other English speaking countries who have pulled me up and said “What does that mean?” and the people who need to use the translators in class, they can’t find fair dinkum in their dictionary. So one of the things that I do is make sure that I am constantly scanning the room while I’m teaching and looking for the puzzled face.

Professor Gregory Gass,
Professor of Exercise and Sports Science, Faculty of Health Sciences and Medicine

And if that wasn’t explained in the biological terms, then the understanding when that international student may be dealing with those in the industry, the international students would be lost, may be embarrassed because they didn’t know and rightfully so, but equally if they do understand that jargon, that concept, that biological basis of that concept, they can communicate more effectively with those in the area and in the industry and in the practice. And so we do try to get the lecture, the content, the practical material across in jargon-free, but we also recognise that they need to be exposed to jargon so that they can communicate.