Today’s era of societies comprise of one coherent global village, in which learning about and understanding other cultures is crucial. Fu-Jen Catholic University (FJCU), a private university in northern Taiwan, has joined the “Global Academic Initiatives” (GAI) coordinated by East Carolina University (ECU) in USA since 2007. A course entitled Cross-Cultural Communication: Global Understanding is offered in FJCU to allow students in the English department to discuss cultural topics with students from two other countries via Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for authentic contacts. The ICT tools support both the synchronous and asynchronous mode of communication. This paper describes the instructional design of the Cross-Cultural Communication: Global Understanding course including the pre-connection trainings and the connection discussions. For the post-connection part, students’ learning and reflections will be discussed along with their e-learning styles. This example could offer other educators who are interested in designing similar intercultural communication courses.
Designing for the first time an undergraduate Cross-Cultural
Communication course for a liberal arts college, I was
faced with the quandary of how to communicate to my students
all that I wanted to teach them about face, politeness,
power, communicative style, and discourse – without
having to ask them to purchase a very expensive packet
of readings. It seems that academic providence took care
of me, because at that point the Scollons' book was
published. Since then I have used it with great success
in my class, which serves students across the spectrum
of disciplines.
The article is devoted to the study of issues related to the problem of “intercultural com-munication”.The complexity and relevance of this problem for the modern stage of cultur-al development is shown. Modernism is seen as an element of erosion of the functional integrity and balance of the dominant cultural system. Based on this research, a number of conclusions are made.
Reform and Practice of Blending Teaching of “Cross-Cultural Communication” Course for Japanese Majors