| Body | The purpose of this activity is to empower learners (intermediate or advanced) to explore a city in the host country while studying abroad and enable them to discuss a cultural influence with members of the target culture. Specifically, learners will focus on culturally appropriate methods of making requests and leave takings during these interactions.
Objectives: Learners will be able to:
- Read and follow instructions on a mobile app in the target language
- Make culturally-appropriate requests in the target language
- Engage in culturally-appropriate leave takings in the target language
Modes: Interpretive Reading, Interpersonal Communication
Resources: Video clips, Portal Handout, Ingress app, Ingress Teacher Tip Sheet, mobile device with video and photo recording capabilities
Procedure:
- If you have not done so already, introduce learners to cultural content that aligns with your program. Some examples include protest art, cultural diaspora, and war history.
- Allow learners to observe video clips of individuals from the target culture making requests and engaging in leave takings by watching short news or talk show interviews. As they take notes, learners should answer the following questions:
- What do you notice about the register of language used in the interactions?
- What steps are taken in executing a successful request? Successfully taking leave? For example, is it common to have to repeat a request or to explain it before it is met in the target language culture in certain situations?
- What vocabulary and grammar are important to successful requests and leave takings?
- Discuss the learners’ observations as a class. Highlight any nuances or subtleties that are inherent to requests and leave takings that may be difficult to observe.
- Introduce learners to Ingress, a place-based mobile app that they will use to explore a local community in the host country (for more information on Ingress, please see our Teacher Tip Sheet). Give learners roughly 20 minutes to download Ingress on their mobile devices in the target language and to pick a faction to represent.
- Learners will work as a class to brainstorm questions that they would like to ask members of the local community about the cultural content that you are covering in class. Then, they will engage in role plays in which they request more information about the cultural content and appropriately execute a leave taking sequence.
- Provide learners with feedback on their role plays. It is beneficial to do so as a class.
- Send learners out into the community to explore the target cultural content by playing Ingress individually. The easiest way to do so is to have the learners complete one of the thematic missions on the game. These missions can include visiting various churches, murals, and a variety of other landmarks (you can find the missions at ingressmm.com). At the location of each portal on the mission, learners will search for and document evidence of the target content. In addition, they will use the questions that they brainstormed in Step 5 to interview at least one member of the community at each portal regarding his or her knowledge of the locations that the learners discover. All of these observations and interactions will be recorded by the learners on the Portal Handout. Teachers must emphasize to that in order to complete Step 6 of this activity, learners should record the interviews in either an audio or a video format.
- The learners will then regroup as a class and share what they learned. Teachers should be sure to ask the learners the following questions:
- What types of places did you visit? Were they important community areas? Why or why not?
- What cultural influences did you note as you traveled through the community?
- Were the people that you spoke to aware of those influences?
- What did you experience when making requests and leave takings that you expected? What did you experience that was unexpected?
- Finally, learners will get into pairs and reflect upon their interactions. They will each provide their group member with two compliments regarding their performance in making requests and engaging in leave takings. They will also provide one recommendation for improvement.
Notes:
More Ingress activities are available for teachers at https://games2teach.uoregon.edu/download/classroom-activities/.
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