Match the following essential key concepts of intercultural communication to their definitions taken from Cambridge Advanced Learners Dictionary.

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1. communication

2. enculturation

3. identity

4. prejudice

5. ritual

6. status

7. stereotype

8. taboo

a. the ongoing process whereby we acquire ‘culture’

b. forbidden to be used, mentioned, or approached because of social or cultural rather than legal prohibitions.

c. a simplified and generalised image of a group of people, which is created out of the values, judgements and assumptions

d. the relative position or standing of somebody or something in a society or other group

e. a pre-formed opinion, usually an unfavourable one, based on insufficient knowledge, irrational feelings, or inaccurate stereotypes

f. a process through which meanings are exchanged

g. the sense we have of ourselves, a person’s social meaning

h. the system of set procedures and actions of a group.

Fill in the gaps with key concepts of intercultural communication given above.

1. …………… helps an individual to survive and better fit into the culture he finds himself surrounded.

2. Our society often creates ……………. which often lead to unfair …………… and persecution.

3. Person’s nationality, gender, location, age, history and religious beliefs are put together to form a cultural ……………...

4. It is important that teachers not automatically blame the student when a variety of cross cultural …………….. problems arise.

5. Certain behaviours are considered ……………., meaning a culture absolutely forbids them.

6. As the daughter of the president, she enjoys high …………… among her peers.

Vocabulary extension.

Choose some of the words from the list (exercise 1). Use a dictionary or the Internet to build up more collocations for each word. [82] Aubrey Neil Leveridge for TEFL.net, 2015

INFORMATION-ACCUMULATION:

WATCHING A VIDEO

Watch a video “Cultural Diversity Examples: Avoid Stereotypes while Communicating” and try to understand the main idea.

Source: https: //www.youtube.com/watch? v=XUO59Emi3eo [85]

2 The conversation was conducted between...

… two Americans

… descendants of Korean and English origin

… Japanese woman and English man

Tick the reason of the woman's weird behavior.

- to show the man that thinking by stereotypes is not good

- to approve that Koreans are strange

- to make fun of the situation

Tick the name of food mentioned during the dialogue.

- fish'n chips

- kimchi

- teriyaki

- sushi

- fish'n chicken

CASE STUDY

1 Discuss in pairs the following questions:

Is it important for a language teacher to have strong background knowledge of the country where the target language is spoken natively? Why?

Did you try to use cultural points for classroom conversation during your internship?

Now read the letter of an English Language teacher from Brazil and compare his opinion with your answers.

Dear Editor:

Not a long time ago when I was in charge of a teacher-training course, one of the teachers asked me the meaning of the word Walder, a word that she had come across in one of the assigned readings. I asked her if she had ever heard of the writer Henry David Thoreau, and I was taken aback when she said she had never heard of him in her life. Outstanding American writers like Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson meant nothing to her. It then dawned on me something was wrong with her “crop” of language teachers.

I have notice a widespread tendency in today’s language teachers to aim at teaching fluency in the target language. They know grammar rules, and are capable of explaining linguistic problems, but they seem to lack knowledge of general culture.

To my mind, a language teacher must have strong background knowledge of country where the target language is spoken natively. The mere possession of this kind of knowledge will enliven the teaching process. Modern teaching of foreign languages from structuralism, to the notional| functional approaches have imposed a rigid discipline upon language teaching that allows minimal outlet for the teachers’ creative efforts. Because a great number of teachers were not properly trained to use the functional approach, they produced what I would call “robot-student”, conditioned by certain arbitrary linguistic formulas and artificial dialogs.

The Walden incident awakened me to a new reality. Since I was teaching in a school that allowed considerable freedom in terms of teaching materials, I decided to introduce more culture in the advanced courses I was teaching. I tried to provide a meaningful context for reading passages or isolated grammatical items.

These cultural discussions would take ten to fifteen minutes at the beginning of class, but they could help the teacher to rid the classroom of that sterile meaninglessness that seems inherited to most linguistic approaches. This kind of teaching requires a teacher with appreciation of culture.

Nelson Salasar Marques Santos, Brasil

COMMUNICATION

1 Answer the following questions:

1. What do you think of the author’s opinion?

2. How did you understand “a teacher with appreciation of culture”?

2 Discuss in pairs and give your own understanding of the following:

· Although cross-cultural interaction is one of the fastest-growing areas of language study, the systematic study of cross-cultural interaction may be new for many teachers.

· As increasing number of students have traveled abroad to learn English, there has been a reevaluation of teaching of teaching content to take account of the need to explore and explain cultural differences in great deal.

· Of crucial importance has been the work on non-verbal aspects of communication such as gestures, posture, and facial expression, which are the most culturally-influenced part of behavior.

Gail Robinson (1985), an American researcher in the area of cross-cultural education, reports that when teachers asked, “What does culture mean to you? ”, the most common responses fall into three interrelated categories: products, ideas, and behaviuors.

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