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Intercultural competence for residence abroad
Intercultural competence is not simply factual knowledge, or a technique or skill. It is an amalgam of knowledge, attitudes, beliefs and behaviours which together allow anindividual to derive maximum benefit from an extended stay abroad. Acquiring intercultural competence is both a cognitive and an affective process, a long-term process during which the student mujst understand the relativity of all beliefs, values and behaviours - including her own. She sees how the culture of any group, large or small, is socially constructed. Ideally, she will learn and make habitual the ethnographic skills which allow her to observe without misunderstanding, the inter-personal skills which let her adapt to the multiple new social milieux, respecting their values without abandoning her own, and the open-minded objectivity which stops her from judging against ethnocentric criteria and which over-rules the inbuilt human tendency to read difference as deficit. In other words, teaching intercultural competence is a tutor-led learning experience which paves the way for an autonomous learning experience.
At the same time, intercultural competence training is only one aspect of the preparation which is essential if the many objectives of residence abroad are to be achieved. Preparation is also
practical - handbooks, briefings from staff, returners and exchange students on everyday matters and problem-solving
academic - research techniques for project work involving primary and secondary sources
linguistic - aimed at developing all four skills to the necessary level, incorporating sociolinguistic competence (i.e. an awareness of what language is appropriate to given circumstances) and insight into strategies which ensure maximum learning, both individual (e.g. noting and rehearsing new vocabulary) and social (how to maximise opportunities for speaking and listening to native speakers)
cultural - knowledge about the society, its history, structures, politics, literature, etc.
professional - awareness of skills which may be acquired or developed while abroad, how to enhance them and record them with a view to later career.
These three lesson plans must be read in this context: not as stand-alone classes with discrete objectives, but as elements in the on-going preparatory process. Our own students build up a dossier, including a diary, to record this process for themselves. All classes are held in the target language, and thus incorporate linguistic objectives.
Three lesson plans follow
1. Mini-survey (two classes)
2. Sociogram
3. Stereotypes
The lesson plans assume familiarity with the students, and groups of 15-30.
1. Mini-survey
Objective: help develop research techniques, trigger reflection on relativity of behaviour based on students' own behaviour and observations.
Class 1
1. Conduct survey: go round of the class, asking each in turn
- when they typically get up
- when they typically go to bed
- what they do for lunch
- what they do for an evening meal
- whether they are attending the university nearest their home
- what kind of place they live in
- how often they see their parents
2. Write responses as cricket scores on the board: students copy them down.
3. Cover research skills: norms, what is typical behaviour, describing data, calculating averages (mean, mode).
4. Get students to predict (and note) what differences there might be if the same questions were addressed to students in their year-abroad destinations.
5. Distribute questionnaires, give instructions for homework:
Students work in groups of FOUR. Groups will obtain responses from six individuals ALL OF WHOM belong to either
- UK students who were abroad
- exchange students from elsewhere
Each group must obtain at least six responses FROM INDIVIDUALS WHO HAVE NOT BEEN QUESTIONED BY OTHER GROUPS. Insist that they check this first, otherwise data is useless.
Each group gets respondents to answer TWO QUESTIONNAIRES, ONE ON UK ONE ON ABROAD. Questions are to be put orally, completed by the group, not given to respondents.
The group will present its data in class and in the target language, with data on OHP.
Class 2
1. Student groups present findings, which others note down.
2. Provide feedback on language and presentation skills in usual way, e.g. filecards listing points for each to work on.
3. Build discussion around results to bring out the following:
recall the list of benefits of residence abroad (from earlier class), all of which spoke of living in another culture
need to adopt different cultural norms in everyday activities if you are to really enter another culture
underline surprises
underline that superficial resemblance can conceal profound differences in the most banal (but also most intimate) areas: time, eating, relationship with family
underline that many returners interviewed had failed during residence abroad to adopt local cultural norms, lived as ex-patriates so failed to benefit fully from residence abroad
get students to swear they will do differently!
mention that they have to keep a diary of year abroad which will record whether they keep their promise.
Materials: inter-cultural questionnaire
Respondent's identity: name:
UK student year 4 / exchange student from ............ (fill in country)
Respondent is referring to life in UK / life in ................
During the week, in term-time, at what time do you normally get up in
the morning?
0500 0530 0600 0630 0700 0730 0800 0830 0900 0930 1000 1030 1100 1130
1200
At what time do you normally go to bed?
2100 2130 2200 2230 2300 2330 2400 0030 0100 0130 0200 0230 0300 0330
0400 0430 0500
What arrangements do you make for lunch?
student cafeteria / buy a sandwich / make and bring a sandwich / cafe
or bar / go home and make it myself / other (specify)
What arrangements do you make for your evening meal?
cook myself at home / student restaurant / cafe or bar / other (specify)
Are you attending the university closest to your home?
yes / no
Where do you live?
with family / hall of residence / room with a family / room in a shared
house / other (specify)
If you do not live in the family home, how often do you see your parents
during the academic year?
most weekends / occasional weekends / only during vacations
2. Sociogram
Objective: to help students appreciate the relativity of culture and the fact that every country, every society, every individual, is multicultural. Residence abroad means extending our range of behaviours.
Approach: general discussion, led and guided by tutor, with class breaking into pairs/small groups for certain activities.
1. Definitions of 'culture' which students have prepared as homework. Write up on whiteboard the key expressions. Probably three categories: Culture (capital C), e.g. music, theatre, literature; Material aspects (objects, products); Non-material aspects (traditions, customs, way of life).
2. Possible agreed definition: totality of material and ideological phenomena attaching to a given social group. Underline the categories. Underline also that we are referring to a social group, usually smaller than the country to which students will have referred.
3. Take one student as example (chosen on basis of knowledge of class). Get her/him to describe all her/his social circles. Parents, grand-parents, schoolfriends, university friends, flatmates, holiday job, term-time part-time job, church, sport, music, pubs, etc. Draw them on the board, at least a dozen circles, many of which overlap, e.g.
4. Each student draws their own sociogram. Conclusion: we all belong to multiple social groups, and thus to multiple cultures.
5. Bring out that each social context has its own code of behaviour. Get some examples, e.g. swearing outlawed at grandparents', essential on building site. Smoking not accepted with parents, accepted in pub. Formal dress for church, fashionable dress for clubbing. Seek less superficial examples: e.g more formal with church friends than flatmates. More open with schoolfriends than university friends. More deferential to parents than to grandparents. Sometimes even different languages: Urdu with aunt and cousins, English with parents.
6. Conclusion: we all have multiple identities, multiple behaviours which we adopt as a matter of course to respect the conventions and values of our different social groups. Values and behaviours are relative, dependent on the social context.
7. Take examples from earlier mini-survey, e.g. British students go to bed later than European counterparts. Is one behaviour, in the absolute, more valid than another? No - these are socially determined habits. So do not interpret difference as deficit.
8. Choices which will face our students abroad next year: in a French/Spanish/German/Japanese/Russian etc milieu, either observe and adopt a new set of behaviours which fit the context, or resolutely retain British behaviours, even rebuilding a British context to contain them. The harder option is to be preferred: be open-minded; observe; imitate; do not reinforce own prejudices; remember that all behaviours and values are relative.
3. Stereotypes
Objective: get students to understand what stereotypes are, how they originate, how to deal with them when abroad.
Approach: class discussion, alternating full-class and small-group discussion. Where possible, get students to draw conclusions themselves; avoid didacticism. Lead discussion rooted in students' own experiences and views; the order in which points are covered does not matter.
1. Starting point: the well-known Eurojoke on OHP:
Heaven is where the chefs are French,
The mechanics are German,
The police are English,
The lovers are Italian,
and it's all organised by the Swiss.
Hell is where the chefs are English,
The mechanics are French,
The police are German,
The lovers are Swiss,
and it's all organised by the Italians.
Alternatively, get students in pairs to draw up a picture of Belgium (bad drivers, flat countryside, stupid, divided by language, chocolates, 700 beers, lace, Capital of Europe), Ireland or Switzerland.
2. Students present their picture. Laughter of other groups will allow you to demonstrate (1) the stereotype is a shared cultural artefact (2) tendency for stereotypes to deride.
3. Discuss definitions; dictionary definitions
4. Discuss origins of stereotypes: family, school, media. Like culture, stereotypes are a social construct
5. Why do people have stereotypes? Simplifying, categorising, organising the complexity of individual experience, can't be done without classifying, reducing individual variation.
6. Social use of stereotypes: communication speedier and more efficient (e.g. TV adverts); group membership/identity attested by stereotypes held of in-group (ourselves in each of our social guises) and of various out-groups (foreigners, the other sex, townies/yokels, northerners/southerners)
7. Features of stereotypes: tend to diminish, often comic, disparaging; always simplified; not built on individual observation; may have some truth or be totally false.
8. Show results of European Language Proficiency Survey research (OHP): students have strong stereotypes of other nationalities.
9. Discuss links between stereotypes and strategies to adopt when abroad:
- we can distinguish between the generality (stereotype) and the individual; must remember to do so when abroad
- resist temptation to judge individual behaviour (e.g. rudeness) as typical of L2land
- stereotypes are reinforced by discussion with other L1landers, i.e. other UK expatriates: be aware of the likelihood, spot it when it happens and resist such misjudgments
- avoid 'funny' letters home which involve stereotyping
- make observation objective.
Professor Jim Coleman
University of Portsmouth