Learning Activities

 

Other Resources

This section contains references to learning activities which we have come across in the course of our research.  It is not exhaustive and we very much welcome suggestions for additions to this section.

Please contact us at icp@lists.lancs.ac.uk

The section is divided into two parts:

Learning Activities and Practical Resources

Academic and semi-academic papers

Learning Activities & Practical Resources

• Sociogram exercise,  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.  

• Stereotypes exercise, to get students to understand what stereotypes are, how they originate, how to deal with them when abroad.

These two exercises come from the RAPPORT project based at Portsmouth, with whom we have collaborated under the RAM banner (Residence Abroad Matters). 

A fuller description of the Sociogram and Stereotypes exercises can be found on the RAPPORT website under the section on Lesson Plans.

• The TVU / Oxford Brookes ethnographic exercises from the work of Celia Roberts and Shirley Jordan, using an ethnographic approach to prepare students for the intercultural aspects of the PRA.  These form part of the Introduction to Ethnography for Language Learners course which was developed as a sub-project of the LARA project, and has been written up in a set of booklets and an accompanying video which are included in the LARA final outcomes pack (see below).

• The LARA final outcomes pack also includes:

Learning and Residence Abroad in Practice, a report designed to re-establish the objectives of residence abroad and suggest practical ways of achieving them, including useful examples of current practice such as a reference list of HEI websites giving information on residence abroad.

International Newsfile  - a set of language tasks and strategies for students to use independently while abroad.  There is also a tutor guide.

Academic Cultural Briefing Course - developed to incorporate preparation for study at a foreign university into the language work of the preceding year.  Separate versions for French, German, Italian and Spanish, with booklets and audio cassettes.

The pack also includes a booklet on Assessment and Accreditation and Learning Agreements - not directly relevant to intercultural issues but of high relevance to tutors and administrators with responsibility for residence abroad programmes. 

A copy of the LARA final outcomes pack has been sent to all HEI's.  Further copies are obtainable from the project - see  http://lara.fdtl.ac.uk/lara.

• Tutor pack: 'Making the Most of the Experience Abroad', designed to enable tutors to encourage the setting of clear objectives before students embark study or work abroad.  It has been piloted across a wide range of disciplines in a number of universities in the UK

• Culture games: simulation activities developed for intercultural awareness-raising programmes.  See a description of one example at Barnga - a culture game.

• The pen sharing exercise - students share a pen and are asked to draw a picture of an object  without speaking, to make them aware of cultural assumptions.

 

Academic and Semi-Academic Papers

• Development of an intercultural learning portfolio from Interactive Skills in a Cross-Cultural Context, by David Jacques.  Paper given at the Developing Cross-Cultural Capability Conference, Leeds Metropolitan University, Dec. 1996. Published in the proceedings of the conference, hard copies can be obtained from CLS.
  

• European Language Portfolio, an initiative of the Council of Europe Modern Languages Project. 

• Video 'The Culture Gap' - a  paper discussing the use of a video entitled "The Culture Gap" for some aspects of inter-cultural training at The Centre For International Briefing, Farnham Castle. 
  Published in the proceedings of the conference
  Cross-Cultural Capability - The Why, the Ways and the Means: New theories & methodologies in language education
  (Leeds Metropolitan University, Dec. 1997) Hard copies can be obtained from CLS.

• Intercultural Communication Skills through Video by Jack Lonergan and Ulla Ladau-Harjulin, University of Westminster and the Swedish School of Economics, Helsinki.
  Paper investigating problems of cross-cultural awareness among Finnish and British business people.  Presents some ways of helping representatives from different cultural backgrounds develop their sense of ethnorelativism and establish rapport and credibility.
  Published in the proceedings of the conference Cross-Cultural Capability - The Why, the Ways and the Means: New theories & methodologies in language education (Leeds Metropolitan University, Dec. 1997).  Hard copies can be obtained from CLS.

• Workshop on language and meaning - developing an understanding that meaning making is contextual and relational, not fixed, can change over time, our interpretations may be largely unconscious and yet inform the way we act on the world.
  Paper, by Laurie Cohen and Gill Musson of Sheffield Business School, entitled
  What's the Union Jack Got To Do With It? Understanding Your Own Culture(s) as a Prerequisite to Cross-Cultural Capability
  published in the proceedings of the Developing Cross-Cultural Capability conference, Leeds Metropolitan University, Dec.1996.  Hard copies can be obtained from CLS.
  

• Students from different cultures are given joint tasks to perform together, and give feedback on differences in organisational approaches. 
  Two papers by Carole Arijoki and Dominique Davison, University of Derby, describing an inter-disciplinary approach seeking to to bring together UK and non-UK students working on a project of common interest.

  Putting an Ideal into Practice was published in the proceedings of the Developing Cross-Cultural Capability conference, Leeds Metropolitan University, Dec. 1996.  Hard copies can be obtained from CLS.

  Coming to Terms with Reality built on the previous paper, presenting revisions to the original project, assessing their success and considering possible future developments.  Published in the proceedings of the conference Cross-Cultural Capability - The Why, the Ways and the Means: New theories & methodologies in language education (Leeds Metropolitan University,  Dec. 1997).  Hard copies can be obtained from CLS.
  

• Teambuilding practice with students from different cultures.  Notes from a paper The Language Class as a Training Ground for Working in Multicultural Teams by Evylene Glaser, Johannes Kepler University, Linz.  Published in the proceedings of the conference Cross-Cultural Capability - The Why, the Ways and the Means: New theories & methodologies in language education (Leeds Metropolitan University,  Dec. 1997).  Hard copies can be obtained from CLS.