View Content #21195

by Stephanie Knight, CASLS Language Technology Specialist

We were students in a restaurant in Campeche, Mexico. Our waiter was clearly annoyed, and I was ashamed. We had a huge party that would hardly fit in the small establishment. A girl from our group complained loudly about the speed of the service. Two other group members asked pedantic questions regarding the quality of the water used in the restaurant. At the end of the meal, we asked for our checks to be split twelve ways. The waiter stared at us with such disdain that I wanted to disappear.

Two years later, I was in Bahía de Tela, Honduras at a different restaurant. I listened as the founder of the Afro Honduran Women’s Network (Enlace de Mujeres Negras de Honduras, or EMUNEH) discussed her new partnership with the Women’s Business Development Organization (Organización de Desarrollo Empresarial Femenino, or ODEF) in which Garifuna women affected by HIV/AIDS would be granted microloans to fund their businesses. I left the restaurant and conducted interviews with a variety of the business owners and negotiated complex topics with much more intercultural sensitivity than I ever had to display in Mexico.

These anecdotes illustrate an oftentimes overlooked truth when it comes to studying abroad; doing so will not necessarily develop the interculturality of learners. In fact, as Salisbury (2011) asserts, little research exists to demonstrate that the intercultural gains experienced by study abroad participants are attributable to the experience itself.

So what must educators do to ensure the success of study abroad programs in developing the intercultural awareness of their language learners? The list below provides tips to address this concern.

Preparatory Phase

1. Begin with the end in mind. Highlight what pragmatic and strategic language skills you want the learners to develop. Prepare the learners by allowing them to observe, evaluate, and reflect upon those language skills.
2. Mediate the gaps in the knowledge and experience that learners will experience while they are studying abroad. Manageable gaps cultivate a dissonance that can ignite curiosity (Houghton, 2014). Engage with learners who have already participated in study abroad to predict what those gaps will be and use that information in planning your instruction.
3. Help learners to set goals for themselves regarding which language functions they wish to master while studying abroad. Doing so will help them to be intentional in their interactions.
4. Have learners discuss biases that they may have regarding the host country. Give them tips on handling those biases while in the host country. Some of these tips can be found at How Can We Have A More Candid Conversation About Race? (http://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour/474820279/beyond-tolerance)

Experiential Phase

1. While studying abroad, allow learners to observe and evaluate authentic language use and reflect upon it just as much as they produce it. Highlight the nuances involved in the execution of culturally appropriate speech acts and service encounters (i.e., extending invitations, apologies, and complaints). Allow learners to evaluate how well they handle various speech acts and to set goals for future encounters.
2. Be intentional in cultivating authentic social encounters (these can be face-to-face or mediated by technology) for your learners so that they are engaged in all registers of language in a variety of contexts.
3. Require the use of the target language insofar as it makes sense to do so. Set clear expectations that will push even highly affective learners to practice the target language, but allow for L1 use in appropriate situations such as the occurrence of medical emergencies and when learners are engaged in metacognitive reflection.
4. Push learners to engage in tasks with members of the host country without their friends. Doing so will help learners to build autonomy and will force them to engage in target-culture interactions.
5. Have group reflection sessions in which your learners discuss what they have observed about the target culture and what they still do not understand. Use this discussion to inspire the design of future learning experiences.

Reflection Phase

1. After returning from the trip, allow learners to decompress by sharing the knowledge and competencies that they gained through study abroad. Use this discussion to foster the discussions that your next group of learners will have in the preparatory phase.

Sources

Houghton, S. (2014). Exploring manifestations of curiosity in study abroad as part of intercultural          communicative competence. El Sevier. 42. 368-382.

Myers, V. (2016, April 22). How Can We Have A More Candid Conversation about Race?. Ted Radio Hour.   Retrieved on May 12, 2016 from http://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-      hour/474820279/beyond-    tolerance.

Salisbury, M. (2011) The effect of study abroad on intercultural competence among undergraduate college students (doctoral Dissertation). Retrieved on May 12, 2016 from Iowa Research Online at http://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2458&context=etd