The Clash of Cultures: Learning Through English in Papua New Guinea

Abstract

When expatriate academics teach Papua New Guineans, there is often a cultural dynamic at play that is inconsistent with that operating in ‘Western’ universities. Insights into some of these issues, particularly language, may assist expatriates to restructure accepted assumptions about teaching and learning in English to more appropriately meet the needs of students from a different culture. This paper argues that language problems occur because students are educated in a language in which their teachers themselves lack facility. Moreover, in the Papua New Guinea context the learning problems with English are associated with a lack of equivalence between the concepts in the academic discourse and the students’ existing conceptual framework. Learning problems in English are more about concept acquisition than translation.

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