An interesting development occurred when we worked on the R/W book reading on “Mandatory Community Service.”

My students come from many countries—Italy, Kazakhstan, South Korea, China, France, Spain, and the Dominican Republic. I asked them to tell us any experiences they have had with volunteering.

Some had volunteered in high school: in their own country or elsewhere (India) when they were older. They were very articulate about all the things they learned from this experience even though some had initially been reluctant.

However, the idea that the best colleges in the U.S. would use community service as a way of selecting students was completely foreign to many. When one student pointed out that service shows leadership skills, some of the students were quite adamantly opposed to this concept. In fact, they couldn’t believe anyone would say this. Fascinating, huh?

When pressed, they responded that “leadership skills” can be seen from high test scores. We had a LIVELY discussion. We all left the table with something to think about. Students had mini-debates in groups of 4, 2 on each side for and against the “mandatory” aspect of volunteering.

Students also loved trying to figure out other “oxymorons”—“mandatory volunteering,” “the undead” (students of all countries know about vampires and zombies), a “fake reality,” and so on.

Tags: community service, cultural differences, debate, efl, esl, esol, northstar, teaching, tefl, tesl, tesol, tips

This entry was posted on Monday, April 12th, 2010 at 8:00 am and is filed under R/W 4, Unit 6, Reading and Writing, Reading/Writing 4. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.