? Rapidly increasing cultural diversity in the U.S. business community will require greater intercultural understanding and skills.
Chapter 9 P355-356
? Systems of formal and informal education seek to meet the perceived needs of societies.
? Schools are a primary means by which a culture’s history and traditions are passed from generation to generation.
? Schools teach the informal knowledge of a culture.
? Schools are a primary vehicle for teaching cultural values.
? Schools in the United States are becoming increasingly diverse.
? Schools no longer teach only Eurocentric cultural values; instead, today schools routinely teach the experiences and values of many cultures.
? Learning preferences are particular ways in which individuals receive or process information.
? Cognitive, communication, relational, and motivational learning preferences have a profound impact on classroom learning.
? Students who are limited in their English proficiency face various obstacles in the classroom.
? Teachers should be aware of what they bring to the classroom in terms of their strengths, weaknesses, and biases.
? Assessing the acculturation levels of the students in the classroom will help teachers determine how much their students are involved in their own culture as well as the Anglo-American culture.
Chapter 10 P381-382
? Culture and language diversity can cause problems in health care communication.
? Cultures differ in the ways they explain, treat, and prevent illness. ?Health belief systems can be divided into three categories—supernatural/magico-religious,holistic,and scientii c/biomedical—each with their own set of underlying premises.
? Cultural diversity leads to differences in beliefs about the causes of illness. ? Because of cultural diversity, people hold varying beliefs about how to treat illness.
? The ways in which people try to prevent illness are culturally diverse. ? Health care practices must accommodate a culturally diverse population. ? It is necessary for health care providers in a multicultural environment to become interculturally competent.
? Intercultural competence requires that health care workers know not only
their own culture but also the cultures of the patients they serve.
? Language diversity is a common problem in health care communication. ? An interpreter should be used when a practitioners are not fluent in the language of their patients.
? Family members and friends generally are not good interpreters because of their connection to the patient.
? Cultural diversity affects individual beliefs about death and dying, which can lead to conflicts between providers and families about communicating bad news to patients.
Chapter 11 P410-411
? Communication with the culturally different may lead to adverse emotional responses that trigger feelings of awkwardness and anxiety.
? Intercultural competence means having the ability to interact effectively and appropriately with members of another linguistic-cultural background.
? The basic components of communication competence are motivation, knowledge, skills, sensitivity, and character.
? Potential problems in intercultural communication include failure to recognize differences, anxiety, the desire to reduce uncertainty, stereotyping, prejudice, racism, misuse of power, ethnocentrism, and culture shock.
? To improve intercultural communication, you must know your culture, know your personal attitudes, know your communication style, monitor yourself, be empathic, be aware of cultural differences in listening, encourage feedback, develop communication flexibility, and learn about cultural adaptation.
? Venturing into a new culture can cause anxiety and emotional disturbances. ? Culture shock is a mental state that comes from the transition that occurs when you go from a familiar environment to an unfamiliar one and find that your established patterns of behavior are ineffective.
? Culture shock has four phases: excitement, disenchantment, beginning resolution,and effective functioning.
? International immigration causes culturally and ethnically diverse societies that must learn to interact with each other.
? Acculturation means dealing with issues of language, disequilibrium, and ethnocentrism.
? The stress-adaptation-growth model provides a theoretical view of cultural adaptation in which sojourners reduce the initial stress of a new cultural environment,learn to adapt to the new culture, and eventually achieve personal growth.
? Disequilibrium may be dealt with through four coping mechanisms: assimilation, separation, integration, and marginalization.
? Adaptation strategies include making personal contact with the host culture, learning about the host culture, and participating in cultural activities.
? Host cultures may react negatively at times to immigration because they see their familiar cities and neighborhoods being transformed into multiethnic, multicultural societies.
? Ethics focuses on appropriate behavior in interpersonal interactions, both within your own culture and when you are in another culture.
? There are two major perspectives on ethics: fundamentalism and cultural relativism.
? Messages elicit responses that may have negative consequences for the message recipient.
? It is important to have respect for others when engaged in intercultural communication.
? Searching for commonalities between people and cultures helps develop an inter-cultural ethic.
? Respecting cultural differences is essential to ethical intercultural communication.
? Above all else, you must accept responsibility for your communicative behavior.
四．Activities and Discuss Ideas. Chapter 1 Activities
1. Explain the following statement: “In studying other cultures, we do so very often from the perspective of our own culture.”188
2. Explain how changes in technology, the new global economy, and increases in the world’s population might affect you.
3. Explain how and why communication and culture are linked.
4.Explain the following statement: “When studying intercultural communication, you should be aware of the problems associated with individual uniqueness, stereotyping, objectivity, and assuming communication is a cure-all.”
5. Explain what is meant by the phrase “Communication is contextual.” Can you think of examples of how context has influenced your behavior?
DISCUSSION IDEAS
1. In small groups, discuss national or domestic news stories from the past week to determine under what circumstances cultures encountering one another display communication.
2. In small groups, discuss your interpretation of the following quote: “Globalization is political, technological, and cultural, as well as economic.” 3. In small groups, identify your culture or co-culture.
4. Discuss with other members of your class the types of communication problems that have occurred when you have interacted with people from cultures different from your own.
5. Explain how these difficulties have made you feel.
6. In small groups, discuss the various ways in which the dominant culture influences and controls the values, attitudes, and behavior of co-cultures.
7. In small groups, discuss the following topic: “We are alike and we are different.” Have the group produce one list that describes how two different ethnic groups are alike and another list that specifies how they are different. 8. In small groups, discuss how changes in the demo-graphics of the United States have affected you. How do you believe these changes will ultimately affect society?
Chapter 2 Activities
1. Ask someone from a different culture some specific questions about child-rearing practices. You might inquire about methods of discipline, toys, games, stories, topics discussed at the dinner table, and so forth.
2. Working in small groups, have each person discuss the “stories” that helped form his or her family and cultural identity.
3. Assemble a small group of people from a variety of cultures and try to answer the following questions:a. What sort of family interactions influence gen-der roles?b. How do family interaction patterns influence relations between young people and the elderly?
4. Pair off in class or out of class with someone from a culture different from your own. Find out as much as you can about the history of your partner’s culture. Try to isolate examples of how your partner’s cultural values have been determined by historical events.
DISCUSSION IDEAS
1. What are some ways in which a person’s family influences his or her cultural identity?
2. Examine the deep structure of your culture(s) and explain how it influences intercultural communication.
3. Compare how the following approaches to parenting would deal with aggressive behavior among children: authoritarian, laissez-faire, collectivist, and individualist.
4. How can the different historical legacies of the United States and the Islamic world promote conflict?
5. Can you think of some ways that globalization will change our traditional
notion of what is considered a family?
Chapter 4
ACTIVITIES
1. Construct a list of as many of your identities as you can. Using the list, draw a pie chart with each identity receiving space proportional to that identity’s importance to you. Compare your chart with other classmates’ charts.
2. Select an ethnicity other than your own and try to answer the five questions from page 172 and 173.153
3. Working with some members of your class, try to list some examples of what you believe to be examples of American ethnocentrism.
4. What is the relationship among stereotypes, prejudice, racism, and ethnocentrism?
5. Can you think of some intercultural communication problems that were not discussed in this chapter?
DISCUSSION IDEAS
1. Why is an awareness of identity important in your personal life? What are some of the situations in which this awareness would be beneficial?
2. How would you define identity? How would you explain your identities to another person?
3. What are some of your different identities and how did you acquire them? What are some differences between your identities and the same identities in another culture?
4. How did you establish some of your identities? How do you enact those identities?
5. Discuss the following statement: “Prejudice can never be eliminated because it is so deeply rooted in human nature.”
Chapter 5
ACTIVITIES
1. In small groups, list the American cultural values mentioned in this chapter. Try to think of other values that are not included in the text. Then find examples from American advertising campaigns that illustrate these values. For example, the advertising slogan from an athletic-shoe manufacturer, “Just do it,” reflects the American value of accomplishment.
2. Working with others in a small group and using Hofstede’s value dimensions, make a list of behaviors found in American culture that reflect individualism, uncertainty avoidance, and femininity.