Cross-Cultural Communication Course
Have you ever struggled to teach your students how to effectively communicate across cultures? Has it been difficult for you to find reliable, adaptable, and straight-to-the-point teaching materials and resources for teaching topics such as intercultural awareness, cultural differences regarding communication styles, social norms, values, etc.?
If your answer is “yes”, then fret no more! EnglishCentral’s Cross-Cultural Communication Course (the first of its kind for the Japanese market!) is here to help overcome these and many other of the pedagogical challenges of teaching intercultural communication. Leveraging the sound application of leading theories on intercultural communicative development and harnessing the power of AI, we have created the ultimate teaching companion that will elevate your ability to get through to your students the importance of developing intercultural communication skills in today’s complex, globalized world.
So, how do we do it?
All major theoretical models on intercultural communicative competence (such as Bennett’s DMIS, Byram’s MICC, Moran’s Cultural Knowings Framework, Van Dyne’s Four Factor CQ Model, Deardorff’s PMIC and Shaules’ DMLL) posit its development as a process. We, at EnglishCentral, see this process as akin to sowing the seed of intercultural awareness in the student. As such, we believe that being an intercultural communication teacher is much more similar to being a gardener, instead than being an actual teacher. You plant the seed in your students, and you use your classes and lesson plans to water this seed, whilst at the same time guiding your students on how to care for this plant… for it to eventually germinate into a big, beautiful tree. Moreover, these theoretical models also describe the intercultural communicative competence development process as a highly introspective one. In this sense, think that, for example, a lesson that exposes a student to having to reflect upon a cultural difference they might need to face in their future professional life, is like making sure that the seed you planted gets enough sunlight. Making them reflect critically about how they view their own (as well as foreign) culture is like watering the plant. You get the idea.
In this sense, our course starts, first and foremost, with preparing the ground for planting the seed. The first two weeks concentrate on developing your students’ discursive competence. Why start here you might ask? Well, because in the span of 12 weeks (or 24 if you sign up for the second semester as well!) the “watering the plant” kind of activities involve interacting with MiMi, our AI-powered chatbot that will guide the student towards critically reflecting upon cultural differences. For these interactions to lead towards meaningful, introspective reflections about the student’s own culture in juxtaposition to other cultures, it is necessary for the student to develop the pragmatic awareness needed for structuring speech in a way that can lead toward critical self-reflections. Under this context, the first week concentrates on teaching the A++Q System, which is a patterned way of interacting that potentially leads to deeper, more meaningful introspections.
Once that groundwork has been laid out, then comes the actual intercultural communicative competence development. Each unit (week) of the course is comprised by 5-6 videos and their accompanying reflective chat with MiMi. Each of the weekly videos are ordered in level of complexity: the first ones tend to be about simpler, more concrete topics; whilst the latter ones tend to grow in complexity. Equally, all topics of the course are organized following this pattern: the first few weeks deal with surface culture-related themes ( food, music, art, etc) and then they progressively enter into deep culture territory ( social norms, values, the concept of culture in itself, etc). Furthermore, MiMi, our chatbot, has been designed to dynamically identify the students’ reactions towards cultural differences, and react with thought-provoking responses when students reject, feel puzzled by, or show willingness to adapt or assimilate elements from other cultures. For instance, after watching a video about how children react to breakfast foods from around the world ….
… then, students will chat with MiMi about this video, and she will dynamically adapt to the students’ reactions/thoughts in a way that should lead them towards introspective self-reflections about not only food across cultures, but also about cultural differences in general. Try it for yourself!
As the course progresses, your students will delve into increasingly higher levels of intercultural awareness and self-reflection. In other words, the pedagogical logic of this course is inductive, as opposed to deductive. It builds upon simple, concrete levels of knowledge about cultural differences, chaining them week after week towards deeper, more complex, and abstract themes on intercultural communication. In addition, although taking the course does imply the acquirement of relevant knowledge about intercultural communication, its main focus is, actually, the introspective self-growth that results from reflecting upon that knowledge!
Ok but…. why does teaching Intercultural Communication matter anyway? Why get it from EnglishCentral in the first place??
Well, imagine English being a bridge that connects two islands: your own culture (island #1) with another person’s culture (island #2).
Learning English allows you to cross the bridge… but wouldn’t this trip be more interesting if you could also learn how to navigate island #2 once you reach it?
Furthermore, the tangible benefits of taking our course are manifold:
1- Developing intercultural communicative competence dramatically affects your professional outlook, in terms of the kinds of jobs you can apply to and are eligible for. For instance, being able to effectively communicate with people from other cultures could lead, among many other things, to having a higher chance of getting promoted to a job that involves interacting with foreigners!
2- The critical thinking skill development that results from taking this course is transferable to a myriad of other scenarios in your studies, life and professional activities. You will become more acute in perceiving the world and you will learn to construe rock-solid arguments when expressing your opinions.
3- The course will open your mind towards learning about the rich diversity of our world, learning to be more tolerant of differences and inclusive of other people’s worldviews.
4- The possibilities for personal growth are almost limitless. Learning intercultural communication is, rather than learning about other cultures, more about learning about your own culture, yourself and the ways you might be unintentionally hampering your improvement as a human being.
5- The EnglishCentral Difference: do you want to improve your intercultural communication skills while at the same time improving your English skills? No worries! We got you covered! EnglishCentral’s leading educational platform will not only help you improve your conversational skills, but also your listening, vocabulary, grammar and even writing skills!
