This free Intercultural Training Exercise Pack offers easy-to-use intercultural and cultural awareness learning activities that can add a useful additional element to any in-house training courses you run, including management development programme s.
Culture shock is a challenging problem for learners moving overseas on long-term assignments. This activity provides a handy checklist of useful strategies to help learners handle the symptoms of culture shock and speed adaptation to the new environment. It also enables learners to identify useful ways of putting these strategies into practice.
The answers to each question are, of course, wholly dependent on the specific culture around which the checklist is undertaken and, of course, the cultural origin of the learners themselves. Not all the questions will be relevant in all situations.
The model provides a structure with which to understand and describe key differences in values between different cultures, and enables individuals from different backgrounds to come to a shared understanding of why and how they differ.
Karl, a Dutch lawyer, felt that his first business trip to Japan was going fairly well. He was determined to get to know his colleagues better and was particularly pleased to be invited out for drinks after work with most of the team, including the senior managers.
Developing observation skills is an important part of enhancing cross-cultural effectiveness . This activity provides an opportunity for learners to pay active attention to the body language of people they see, and to speculate on what people may be trying to communicate in non-verbal ways, either consciously or unconsciously.
No matter how well prepared someone may be for cross-cultural contact, misunderstandings can occur in any situation where individuals with different values, beliefs and ways of doing things interact. In these circumstances it is necessary to attempt to overcome misunderstandings in a structured and explicit fashion.
To Do#N#In this exercise, a story in an unfamiliar language is written on the blackboard, and the trainees are asked to write an end to the story. They are not allowed to interact with each other or take each other’s help.
It becomes important to understand the nuances of the different cultures that the students of the class belong to. This requires interaction with the students that goes beyond the formal training of the classroom. There are several ways in which this can be arranged. For one, parent participation is important.
Sometimes a student will find it difficult to cope with the lessons or the cultural differences of the classes. This will then have an impact on his performance. In order to help with this, teachers can either choose to provide extra training with the lessons or be around for counseling.
Learning about cultural diversity is an ongoing process and cannot be relegated to a one-time activity. Regular meetings and discussions need to be held. These will provide a platform for the teachers to interact and discuss.
The most ideal and direct way of training teachers is to hold as many interactive activities and games in the setting of the class. This will not only train the teachers, but will also help the rest of the students in the class to become aware of diversity in classrooms.
Every school needs to have a program that trains new teachers in the varied ways of handling a culturally diverse class. This training should be undertaken by the faculty and teachers who will act like mentors.