Uncertainty Avoidance in Teaching and Learning
Over the past few decades, the need to consider cultural differences in determining how best to teach English language has been discussed frequently. Holliday has strong feelings on the matter, and pushes for greater discourse and research:
“Clearly we need to re-think the whole fabric of English language teaching methodology; and we must do this through a greater awareness of social context and cultural variety”
(Holliday, 1997: 418)
Our understanding of the concept of varying uncertainty avoidance levels, and the impact these can have in language learning situations, is of great value in this quest. The „confused encounters‟ (Thorp, 1991: passim), or „culture bumps‟ (Carol Archer, 1986, quoted in Jiang, 2001: 382) which we experience can be overcome, if teachers are aware of their own cultural norms, as well as those of their students. Jiang provides several examples of frequently encountered culture bumps, and offers us a set of six principles that NESTs should follow to negotiate them successfully (Jiang, 2001: 387-389).
In his paper relating his dimensions of cultural differences to teaching and learning, Hofstede includes a table of „Differences in Teacher/Student and Student/Student Interaction Related to the Uncertainty Avoidance Dimension‟ (Hofstede, 1986:314. Reproduced in Table 1 below).