Understanding Intercultural Communication

Improved Essays
Understanding Intercultural Communication

Intercultural communication primarily focuses on how people from differing cultures, background, beliefs and/or communities communicate across different cultures

When attempting to further understand communication across cultures, it is important to understand that cultural differences stem not only from different languages being spoken or individual origins being different of ones own birth country or region; cultural differences can appear from those whom live in the same region or city but come from a different social group. Let use the example of a senior citizen and a teenager, these two individuals typically come from different social groups and tend to typically communicate differently.
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In the classroom, communication ought to be seen as a source to gauge intercultural knowledge. Not only to better understand students, but used as an aide to enrich student experience between culturally diverse students. This can only be done if the educator is proactively involved.
In turn, educators ought to be sensitive and aware of potentially problematic outcomes in the ever growing diverse classroom.

In order to communicate amongst students of different backgrounds, the educator must possess successful communications skills. What is meant by that is the ability to effectively transfer knowledge in the classroom. This is done through verbal and nonverbal communication appropriate to the intercultural setting including affective abilities that allow the educator to react sensitively to fellow communicators (students, other teachers, or parents)

A rich repertoire of verbal and nonverbal behaviors appropriate to the intercultural situation as well as affective capabilities to react sensitively to fellow communicators from other cultures is a necessity in education (Linde, 1997).

Nonverbal
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Create assignments where students are asked to present items that represent their cultural backgrounds. This allows students to teach aspects of not only their cultures but language and assist them in clarifying their own cultural identities.

Strategies for Teaching Culturally Diverse Students

Use a variety of instructional learning activities and strategies. Educators who offer a variety of not only activities but learning strategies to their students offer them the opportunity to learn in a way that is not only responsive to their own communication styles of their culture, but also their aptitudes and cognitive styles. Variety supports student development in successfully learning other approaches to learning.

Consider the students’ language skills and/or culture in developing instructional activities and objectives. This can be done in facilitating like learning opportunities for students with differing characteristics.

Provide frequent feedback. Providing students with feedback at multiple levels of instruction is ideal. Acknowledging a student when they give a correct response can be an example of brief/direct feedback. While prompting a student who may have given and incorrect or incomplete answer by providing him/her with cues falls into another category of

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