Includes index.

Bibliography: p. 125-130.

"Crosscultural Understanding presents a comprehensive study of culture learning and its applications to English as a Second Language, Foreign Language and Bilingual Education Programs. It clearly paves the way to new theory and practices in culture teaching through the perspectives of anthropology and psychology.

For some time second language and bilingual educators have been concerned with the relationship between first and second language acquisition. The profession has learned a great deal about optimal second language learning conditions and approaches from analysing the process by which first languages are naturally acquired. This book offers similar advances in the area of culture learning in second language and bilingual classrooms or 'second language acquisition' by analysing the process by which first cultures are acquired.

In contrast to traditional notions of understanding as 'awareness' or explicit knowledge of cultural behaviours, values and institutions, it focuses on the internal aspects of culture which cause misunderstanding as well as promote positive interaction and attitudes.

It will be particularly useful as a text in crosscultural teaching strategies and culture teaching for ESL, bilingual and foreign language teacher training programs. Moreover, as language itself may be viewed as a complex set of cultural learnings, this book will be useful in all language teaching methods courses." (Book Cover)

CONTENTS

Chapter 1 HOW CAN A PERSON FROM ONE CULTURE UNDERSTAND SOMEONE FROM ANOTHER?

Personal, philosophical and educational concerns

Key principles

Selective, interdisciplinary approach

Chapter 2 WHAT IS CULTURE?

Introduction: definitions of culture
Teacher definitions -- A behaviorist definition -- A functionalist definition -- Benefits and inadequacies of behaviorist and functionalist definitions -- A cognitive definition -- A symbolic definition

Summary

Chapter 3 WHAT ARE THE EFFECTS OF CULTURAL EXPERIENCE ON PERCEPTION IN GENERAL?

Introduction

Culture, language and perception

How does cultural experience affect perception in general?
Content familiarity and perception -- Organization of stimuli -- Anticipated organization and perception -- Preferred perceptual mode and experience: field dependence and field independence -- Formal schooling and its effects on field independence -- Potential biases -- Input mode - ways of presenting information -- Output mode - ways of responding

Summary
Examples

Conclusion

Chapter 4 HOW ARE CULTURE AND CULTURAL ROLES ACQUIRED?

Empirical perspective
Multi-modal transmission of culture -- Emotion -- Sound -- Space -- Time -- Body movement and dance -- Touch -- Taste, foods and food sharing -- Aesthetics and visual adornment -- Cultural transmission and acquisition as an integral process

Philosophical perspective

When is the prime time to transmit and acquire cultural learnings?
Early childhood -- Adolescence

Conclusion

Chapter 5 HOW DO CULTURAL LEARNINGS AFFECT THE PERCEPTION OF OTHER PEOPLE?

Introduction

How does cultural experience influence social perception?
Cues - Physical cues -- Behavioral cues
Schemas - Person schemas -- Event schemas
Evaluation of others - Central traits of theory -- Projections of self -- Similarity -- First impressions

How do crosscultural misunderstandings occur? Actual dissimilarity of cues and events
Different cultural assumptions -- Different ways of structuring information and arguments in a conversation -- Different ways of speaking -- Different ways of interacting: reciprocity of communication -- Remedying misunderstandings due to actual dissimilarities

Cognitive Biases
Tendency for consistency -- Status characteristics and expectation status theory -- "Halo" versus "forked-tail" effects
Cue salience
Faulty inferences and attribution errors
Salience and causality: "seeing is believing" -- Judging ourselves versus others -- Intervening in attribution errors through empathy and analogy

Summary

Chapter 6 HOW CAN WE FACILITATE POSITIVE IMPRESSIONS OF PEOPLE FROM OTHER CULTURES? THE ROLE OF ETHNOGRAPHY

What is ethnography?
Categorizing experience -- Observer as participant -- Non-laboratory setting

Obtaining cultural information for the content of instruction

Obtaining cultural information for use in methodology

Evaluating fulfillment of cultural goals
Do students in multicultural classrooms participate equally? -- Do teachers and students percieve other students the same way? -- Does language fluency mean a foreign-language student has a positive attitude toward members of the target culture?

Ethnography as a process which promotes understanding and positive interactions?
Commitment of time -- Depth of discussion and observations -- Creative listening -- Self-awareness: learning by contrast -- The effects of being a "participant"

Conclusion

Chapter 7 HOW CAN WE MODIFY NEGATIVE PERCEPTIONS OF OTHER PEOPLE? A SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY APPROACH

Predictability: culture shock or culture cushion?
Learned helplessness: predicatbility with no control

Need for control or coping strategies
Types of copying strategies -- Internal versus external control

Learning to cope through mastery: a social learning theory approach
Psychological matching -- Similarity of the model -- Variety of models and observation trials -- Observation of positive consequences -- Repeated exposure to graduated tasks -- Learners "can do" judgments

Contrasts with other crosscultural sensitization approaches
Awareness through lecturing and reading -- Self-confrontation: mini-dramas -- Role play and cultural simulations

Conclusion

Chapter 8 BECOMING MULTICULTURAL

Multicultural man: myth or reality?

Developing cultural versatility
Summary of processes -- Contrast with approaches in foreign language, second language and bilingual programs

Becoming multicultural: subtractive bulturalism, marginality or versatility?

Conclusion

Appendix: A CASE STUDY OF AN ETHNOGRAPHIC INTERVIEW

How does it feel to be a student from India at Stanford?
Procedure: the key informant approach - Why use one "key" informant? -- Finding my key informant and establishing rapport
Cultural information which emerged - Mira's background -- Asking the "grand tour" question -- American culture at Stanford and the culture of India: learning through contrast

Self awareness and the making of a friendship Know others and know thyself -- Learning to listen: confessions of a talker -- Taking the time to go into depth

References

Index