Take a Walk in My Shoes - Experiencing the Barrier of Language
“What is different in Malaysia?” I ask my new Korean students, carefully enunciating each word.
“So hot. Ma-lay-si-a so hot. Korea have the winter. So cold. Here, always sun,” a student explains as she points out the window of our classroom to the blazing afternoon sun.
She is one out of a group of students I work with who, just weeks ago, relocated to our rural Malaysian town from South Korea.
Life is very different here, from what I understand.
Teaching English as an Additional Language (EAL) in Asia, I have a unique opportunity to engage with young students from many cultures who speak many languages.
However, English is the only language spoken in the classroom (and the only language I speak fluently). That's not true during play time, though. You can hear echoes of Mandarin, British English, Tamil, Korean, and Bahasa, and sometimes a combination of these, through the school.
But, when everyone needs to understand each other, guess which language we speak...
English.
Lucky me, a native English speaker, I’m advantaged in this situation.
On the contrary, put me in a room full of native Korean speakers, and it’s me who is clearly disadvantaged.
Time to take a walk in someone else's shoes...
Yesterday, 10 of my EAL students had their first opportunity to chat with our one and only Korean-speaking teacher. While we strongly encourage speaking English in the classroom, they were encouraged to speak Korean for this chat. I listened in and provided questions in English which were translated in Korean.
I was humbled as I “walked a mile in their shoes.”
I sat with them completely clueless to what was being said.
While I listened to the Korean language flow through the room, I tried to pick out similar sounds. I heard one or two. I tried to read facial expressions and pick up on mannerisms: a few laughs, smiles, nodding heads, rolling eyes.
I caught a handful of English words; a couple numbers, my own name, and a few school subjects. In a 30-minute conversation, that’s all I picked up - a couple words from my own language.
Where I felt unfamiliar, they found familiarity.
Where I lacked understanding, they were understood.
I officially felt “in their shoes.”
I walked away with a greater sense of empathy from this experience of walking a mile in their shoes. Their languages and experiences are quite different to mine. Those differences are part of what makes life so awe-inspiringly beautiful.
Rather than dismiss others or blame them for being different, let’s seek to understand and see the beauty in these differences.
Let's all go "walk a mile in someone else's shoes" today.