Building Intercultural Skills. 1. What kinds of personal power do you invoke with your labels?

1. What kinds of personal power do you invoke with your labels?

2. Do you know how many language groups were represented in your institute?

3. Is it true to your opinion that when we lose languages we lose cultures?

4. As the use of e-mail and Internet chat rooms increases, certain communication styles will probably become more important because of the unique kind of communication involved in such text-based media. What is the preferred style for e-mail and computer-mediated communication?

5. Practice expanding your language repertoire in intercultural situations. When you speak with others whose first language is different from yours, speak more slowly, use easy-to-understand words and simple sentences, avoid slang.

6. Meet in small groups with other class members and come up with a list of general labels used to refer to people from other countries who come to Russia as immigrants. For each label, identify a general connotation (positive, negative and mixed). Discuss how the connotations of these words may influence our perceptions of people from other countries.

7. Standards of beauty vary widely across cultures, but people with the most symmetrical faces are more likely to be considered beautiful across cultures, regardless of supposed racial or cultural markers of beauty. Is beauty truly in the eye of the beholder?

8. Why do you think nonverbal communication is so necessary before (and after) we have the ability to communicate verbally?

9. Become more conscious of your nonverbal behavior in intercultural encounters. Practice your encoding skills. You can do this by noting the nonverbal behavior of others – their facial expression, gestures, eye contact. Check to see if their nonverbal communication is telling you that they understand or misunderstand you.

10. Choose a cultural space that you’re interested in studying. Visit this space on 4 different occasions to observe how people interact there. Focus on eye contact and personal space. Based on your observations, list some rules about proper nonverbal behavior in this cultural space.

Lecture 4.

Intercultural Competence

Key Terms