The forest ecologist

I began to teach in English during my third year of assistant professorship. My foreign students are expected to learn how to manage woodlands and how to conserve the plants and the animals that make up forest ecosystems. For six years I have been visiting universities in Europe, Australia and Africa, ambitiously immersing myself in the everyday life, in an attempt to feel those “cultural thought patterns” Robert Kaplan (1966) puzzled over in his essay of that title. Gradually over this period, from country to country, and from class to class, I developed an idea of how I should teach in this vehicular language. For example, I have learnt how to lower language barriers in learning and teaching through information and communication technology. Yet, cultural barriers can be more profound than language barriers and straight technological bridges alone may not be enough to cross them.