I sometimes have to teach strange things. I teach English for people who need it in a professional context. The most unusual things I have had to do over the years are:
—– proofread and edit erotic letters from a student to her English-speaking long-distance partner
—- Shopping English – teaching pronunciation of designer brands. Ironically, most of the brands were French and Italian.
—- horseriding and golf English. I had to learn a lot very quickly!
—- help someone stop parroting the accent of the person to whom he was speaking. After automatically imitating an Indian accent and almost being beaten up, he decided he needed help. This was a very hard habit to break because some people naturally model the accent and English of the person to whom they are speaking.
—- teach the Swedish used in the Swedish public sector. This was a rather strange task because, although I speak very good Swedish, it is not good enough to teach Swedish to an English speaker. The problem was that the client could not find a Swedish teacher that knew the very specific Swedish terms used in the Parliament, government and government authorities. I had learned all them in my job teaching English.
Ah, pontification
This previous term I was given the task of helping someone who pontificated, rambled, and interrupted. He and had been spoken to about it by his boss. This was not a neurodiverse person enthusiastically speaking about their deep interest in a topic. It was more a case of being a middle-aged white man who mansplained, spoke over people (particularly women) and rambled to such an extent that people had complained about him. He had been doing it for a long time but in an EU working group context, this behaviour is no longer acceptable nowadays.
It was rather funny because when I initially tried to help him, he pontificated, rambled and interrupted me for a full hour. I had told him I was going to record it, and when he watched the video he was shocked at how he had dominated, or tried to dominate, the entire discussion.
In the end we discussed:
- listening rather than talking
- listening to understand rather than to reply
- he needed to watch the reactions of the others in the group. If he could see the life draining out of their eyes, he needed to stop
- remembering that we have two ears and one mouth, so listen twice as much as you speak
- he needed to have a point. There is no point speaking if you have nothing to say. Speaking for the sake of speaking doesn’t help anyone
- he had to stop trying to one-up everyone, data dump, and volunteer information that no one asked for
- no going off topic
- divide the number of people in the group with the number of minutes the meeting would last. That is how much speaking time you have. It turned out he was taking up 80% of the speaking time allocated.
- ask questions instead of giving opinions when not asked
- ask yourself why you want to say this. Just because you know something does not mean you should say it
- remember also that some people need silence to be able to speak. You are not giving them that
- if you are saying this to serve yourself, stop
- if you are trying to control the situation, stop
- learn to sit with silence. It may help others step up and speak
- has your input been requested?
- how are people responding? Are you giving them the chance to reply?
We discussed some things to remember
- W.A.I.T. — Why Am I Talking?
- Craig Ferguson’s
– does this need to be said?
– does this need to be said by me?
– does this need to be said by me, now? - do not destroy silence unless you believe you can improve upon it
- if someone asks me the time, I must not tell them how to make a watch
To be honest, this was one of the hardest things I have ever done. Not only was it out of my sphere of expertise, but it brought back many unpleasant experiences of my previous jobs in male-dominated careers. Being talked at without being able to get a word in edgewise in an area where I probably know more than the person talking at me has caused me to close down and stop contributing at all.
Over the week though, he started to listen and even reveal to me how he can hear himself rambling but cannot stop. How he fears that people will think he doesn’t know anything if he stays silent, and about being one of the oldest in the working group with the culture changing around him. He confessed that he was the same at family gatherings and that he knew he irritated people. Our final video was way better than the first one, so there was definite progress. We will be having a debriefing after his next EU meeting and I hope that he will be able to put into practice all that we practised.