Nefertary Miranda

Intercultural Communication
Service Learning Paper
December 9, 2014

Submitted to:
Tamra K. Phillips, M.S.
Communication 2150
Department of Communication
Salt Lake Community College

Service Organization
I volunteered at the English as a Second Language Lab at the Taylorsville campus of Salt Lake
Community College. Contact Information:

Andy Shaw
ESL Instructor
English as a Second Language Lab
Salt Lake Community College
TB 125, 123

Project
The English as a Second language Lab at Salt Lake Community College offers classes for
students who do not speak correct or enough English to be enrolled in the College. The program offers
a series of classes that are classified into levels and subjects or areas to help adult students become
fluent and understanding in the English language, so that they can then enroll into the college as regular
credit hours students and be able to obtain the degrees they desire. The programs puts a lot of emphasis
into making the students feel welcomed and included, having small classes and dedicating and much
time as possible to one on one help.
For my service I was not assigned to an specific student for the whole time, I rotated by helping
student across the classes, and usually the students I helped were not of Spanish speaking cultures,
since I speak Spanish and then they may be more inclined to just giving up and communicating with
me in Spanish. More than once I got to help two students from the Middle East, Kaluta and Hannah, on
the occasions that I helped them I was there for help with grammar, focusing on the correct use of

present, past and future tense for verbs. On others days I got to converse with everyone from class, on
the first session I did, Andy had us sit facing each other (volunteers and students) and we had one
minute to ask questions while the other one answered and then we switched on who was asking the
questions and who was answering, this was by far my favorite activity, it was fun to see what the other
person would choose to ask you first, after not knowing me at all, most of them started with my name
since even though my Nickname is easy to pronounce they still found it unusual, later on came
questions that I was expecting such as how old I was and what my major was, however, one student,
Luis Miguel who is from Venezuela surprised me by asking me whether or not I was married and if I
was part of the Mormon church as his first two questions. On most of the other times I was there to
help the students with pronunciation, written grammar and spelling and other aspects that had to do
with writing and reading.

Cultural Groups
Of the students whose names and nationalities I can remember best are Milagros, a 45 nyear old
woman from Mexico, Kaluta a middle age woman from Iran, Donald a middle age man from Venezuela
and Rosalyn, also from Venezuela. I also talked to a handful of younger students, such as Hannah who
is from the Middle east, Fatima who is from Northern Africa, Luis Miguel who is from Venezuela and
Carla a 19 year old girl from Mexico as well. On my time at the ESL lab I also talked to different
students that came from various places in Asia, such as Laos, China, Japan, and Vietnam.

Challenges
The service learning experience came with a number of obstacles for me. The first one was my
lack of time, I work a full time job and have several responsibilities at home that I have to take care of,
one of them being my dog, Pedro, I specifically mention him because sometimes even if I had enough
time to drive from the college to my job in the time that doing a daily hour of service would let me I

had to go home and feed him since there was no one to take care of him on certain days, using up time
that otherwise would have helped me finish my project earlier. I also started my job this semester which
did not give me much flexibility to come in late of miss certain days since I was a new employee. Apart
from the lack of time that every working college student is expected to have, I also found my self
confused more than once on the way that the student are thought in the lab, there is a heavy emphasis
on the tense and forms of verbs, that even though I know how to use and change, I did not know the
correct terminology for what each thing was, I was introduced to new terms such as Perfect
Progressive Past and other new names for things that were by now instinctual and part of general
knowledge for me, despite also having learned English as my second language once I was no longer a
small child. Wanting to be the best to the students and sometimes helping them understand that there
was more than one way and a lot of exception to rules, that is common for the English language, was
difficult. I was helping people that were a lot of the time older than me, and they trusted what I said and
accepted criticism and directions with out questioning me, this put a lot of pressure in me, I wanted to
make sure that I was giving them the right information and recognition for what they were doing.

Theory
The theory I want to reflect my paper on is the Face Negotiation Theory, by Stella TingToomey. I chose this theory for three main reasons; it was one of the ones that I understood the best
from class and therefore felt more comfortable using, it was one that related to my feelings during my
service hours and lastly, it was a theory that came from an influential woman, I was somewhat biased
towards it.
In our course packet Face Negotiation Theory is explained as the protection and care or
maintenance that one puts into our face, in this case when we refer to a face what it means is a
Public image that evrery one wants to claim for him or herself (Phillips, 2014, p.41). There are four
ways in which one takes care and maintains one's face.

Face Restoration: The act of protecting our own privacy and space.

Face Saving: The act of protecting another person's space and privacy.

Face Giving: Putting effort into other person's need for inclusion

Face Assertion: Protecting and caring about our own need for inclusion

The style of face maintenance that one uses can change drastically depending on where we are
from, now that I live in the United States, I have adapted the more self centered style of living in which
I care about face Restoration and Assertion, both focused on one's self, whereas in the culture that I
grew up, which is from Central Mexico, people are more inclined to helping and caring about others,
using face Saving and Giving, which influence my experience during the service learning a lot.
The second part of the Face Negotiation theory are Conflict Strategies. (Phillips, Nov 21, 2014)

Avoiding: Not placing attention or removing one's self from the problem (Lose/Lose)

Obliging: Giving into someone's demands. (Lose/Win)

Dominating: Making the other person give into our demands. (Win/Lose)

Compromising: Both parties letting go of something in exchange of something else. (Win/Win

or Lose/Lose)

Integrating: As the name says, integrating both the necessities to come out with the best solution
(Win/Win)

Analysis
I found my self leaning toward this theory when I realized how concerned I was with making
sure that the students I was helping felt knowledgeable and appreciated while at the same time I wanted
to keep their trust and have them think of me as intelligent. Many times as I was teaching them or
helping with in class assignments I was not familiar with the descriptive terminology that was used and
I was concerned with how they would see me, I would try and make sure that just because what I was

telling them wasnt exactly what was written in their books it was still grammatically correct and
acceptable as a form of correct communication. On other times I could see how insecure they were of
themselves and how they were even disappointed when something that they had written was not right,
in this cases I found my self immediately trying to show them that they were mistakes easy to fix and
even found my self sharing stories from my younger years when I was still learning English, just doing
what I could to make them feel better, and to minimize their discomfort.

Reflection
I was surprised by how I felt a lot of the time, I did not consider my self to be a very collectivist
person, having become used to the individualistic life style that I now live, I was surprised when I saw
how much I cared about the way in which this strangers saw me and themselves. It also brought back a
lot of memories from times in which I was also learning a new language, trying to catch on as fast as I
could because I was tired of feeling clueless and so different from everyone else.
Working with people that were many times older than me brought a protective and at the same
time respectful attitude to my behavior, I saw people that had families and jobs, busy lives that were
taking steps to become better people, knowledgeable and capable, it was moving and motivating at the
same time. I found my self happy and eager to help them, specially towards the end of the term where
I knew their big test was coming up, it was a big change from the beginning where I saw the project as
just another piece of time consuming homework, it made me feel helpful and included, it ended up
being a really good experience and I am motivated to go back and help.

References
Phillips, T. K. (2014) Intercultural Communication Course Packet p. 41.
Phillips T. K. (11.21.2014) Intercultural Communication, Salt Lake Community College.