Dear Shaitan,

Aside from the book assigned to my speech course, I have discussions with my students about language barriers, discrimination, and ways to collaborate in an intercultural environment. Many of my students are bi-lingual. They speak Spanish, Creole, French, Chinese, Korean, or another language. We explore the differences in family structure, gender roles, and body language. Many questions arise surrounding domestic abuse, friendship, political and religious viewpoints, economic gaps, and life, in general.

Thank you for your question.

Dr. Cartwright

Provided humans are heavily vision dependent and that most barriers to communication such as discrimination has a visual basis.

One activity I do is to blindfold the students sometime within the first class, before I ask anyone to speak, but generally after I give orientation. Once their eyes are removed from the class, I randomly ask the student to describe themselves or answer a few questions related to goals or interests. It's a simple exercise but we gain arguably more information from our ears and critical thought than we do from vision as a social filter. After they get their back I explain week 2 readings lol

Joan Cartwright Dear Dr. Cartwright, thank you very much for sharing the ways you approach teaching Intercultural Communication to your students. I will certainly incorporate your suggestions in my class. My students are also bilingual with Japanese as a native language and English as a second one.

Kind Regards,

Alexandra Shaitan.

Robb Elton Sounds interesting, never heard of this sort of activity in teaching Intercultural Communication to ESL students. What is/was students' response to it? Did they question what the rationale for the activity was? Did they react positively/negatively?

It is a rather interesting one.

Thanks for sharing,

Best wishes,

Alexandra Shaitan.

All the students did speak English, and as far as week 2, they all were able to recall the specifics of someone's introduction which was surprising, as such I think they understood the rationale. It was also a form of team-building. All the students who have ever experienced this thought positive about the exercise, and the surprise, novelty of it if only to show discrimination as a barrier to communication comes from the eyes.

I'm glad I could suggest an activity. Which language do you instrt? You have a wonderful name, by the way.

Good fortune to your endeavors.

hi haw are you nicve to meet im intersting but what domaine yoou speak aboout and thns respect

Robb Elton So sorry for a delayed reply. Somehow, I missed your second message. Thank you very much indeed for commenting on my name. I really appreciate it. I teach English to university students in Tokyo, Japan. Have lived and worked in Japan for many years. For the past two years, I have taught Intercultural Communication as well as Global Communication and was wondering how other teachers have taught the said courses.

Wishing you a wonderful weekend,

Kind Regards,

Alexandra.

You, too Shaitan Alexandra🌹

Dear Alexandra,

I am glad to share a link to my YouTube channel about cross-cultural communication that I started primarily for students.

The idea is to collect short interviews with experts sharing their opinions about their national communication styles.

Hope, you and your students find it interesting and useful.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHmWC4LjcuhZ1mzB5RI63tQ

Denys Lifintsev Dear Denys,

Thank you so much indeed for sharing a treasure trove of what I have been looking for. I can not thank you enough, will definitely use the videos with my students in Japan. I would be more than happy to collaborate with you on a joint project and would love to have you as a quest speaker in one of my university online classes if you are available. At any rate, thank you so much indeed.

Kind Regards,

Alexandra.

I have my students give poster presentations on an underprivileged group of their choice. Also we decide on guidelines together. Once the presentations are done, we reflect on them through group discussions. There are also really good youtube videos or online lectures I prepared on different intercultural issues. Students watch them and reflect on themselves as individuals in society. One of the common topics is stereotypes.

Soyhan Egitim Thank you so much for sharing your teaching techniques and suggestions. Coincidentally, our next week class (Tuesday, Tokyo time) is on the topic of "Stereotypes." Jointly-constructed guidelines sound good, might do it asap with my students.

Thank you very much for your constructive feedback,

Kind Regards,

Alexandra.

Shaitan Alexandra, I have a new book coming out on leaderful classroom practices which offer some practical and theoretical insights into co-constructing guidelines and activities with students by giving them leadership.

Soyhan

Soyhan Egitim Sounds great! Please do let me know once it has been published and I would be happy to use it in my teaching.

Definitely. The tentative title is “Collaborative leadership through leaderful classroom practices: Everybody is a leader”

Soyhan Egitim Thank you so much indeed, please do remind me once it has been published and I would be more than happy to recommend it to my colleagues worldwide.

Shaitan Alexandra Thank you very much! I really hope, your students will find these videos useful! And, for sure, I would be glad to join any of your classes. From my experience, it is very motivating and interesting for students to have joint online-classes. I have had such experience with my Bulgarian, Romanian and Lithuanian colleagues. For example, students are given similar tasks (to prepare presentation on certain topic) and then - online meeting with their foreign colleagues which includes presentations and discussion. Usually, it also includes some fun and possible cross-cultural students' friendships :)

Denys Lifintsev Thank you so much for your prompt reply and wonderful suggestion on joint classes. Do you teach classes online or via Zoom/Microsoft Teams at present? I will talk to the Head of the Department and see how I can pull off the idea. It sounds absolutely exciting and I am sure students will benefit from such an experience.

Thank you so much indeed,

KInd Regards,

Alex.

Shaitan Alexandra Sounds great! I usually use Teams and Zoom so both are fine! I really appreciate your support of the idea. Probably, let's discuss the details over email or WhatsApp?

goood

Vahid Ghorbani

Kind Regards,

ALexandra.

I believe that youtube videos can serve in enhancing students' intercultural competence. It is also advisable to engage them in live onlive communication activities with foreigners as that is a more natural learning environment.