"Vidal says there are as many recipes as there are cooks and what makes a good paella is a matter of opinion, except in Valencia, where it’s a question of science."

As they say in the video, eating bread is like eating a piece of history! Let me at it! I love bread!

What is the difference between good and great communication skills? Sharon Kristjanson suggests it is the ability to examine our judgments that skew our understanding of the world. Her vision is a world with more collaborative and productive discussions, regardless of politics or background.

I love her analogy of an 8-piece and a 1000-piece puzzle.

A report outlining CILMAR's goals for 2022.

A report assessing whether CILMAR met its goals in 2021. 

This worksheet helps participants to describe and reflect on their identities in terms of their skills, favorite books/movies, hobbies, etc. 

All of the materials required for this activity are available through the LSA Inclusive Teaching Initiative at University of Michigan (see the Links section in this tool). Participants can complete this activity individually on their own time and then post it to an online discussion board so that they can get to know their peers, or they can send the worksheet to the facilitator/instructor once it is completed. 

This episode features Dr. Tatjana Babic Williams, Director of Italian Studies and Senior Lecturer, and Dr. Annalisa Mosca, Senior Lecturer and Coordinator of Italian 101-202 at Purdue University. They discuss the Italian program's efforts to redesign the curriculum to incorporate intercultural learning at all levels. In particular, they discuss their use of backwards design to embed intercultural learning outcomes into several of their courses. 

This post includes links to the episode recording, the presentation slides, and the following resources/tools referenced in the presentation:

• ASKS2+ assessment
• Name Story, aka The Name Game
• D-I-E
• Bridging Behaviors
• Iceberg
• Who Am I? Identity Dialogue
• Flower's Point of View
• Scenery, Machinery, People
• Final ICC Reflection
• Voices from the Past (Name Tags)
• Cultural Autobiography
• Pacing
• Direct-Indirect Communication
• Say My Name
• "Black sounding" names and their surprising history
• Hofstede Value Dimensions Online Country Comparison Tool
• Intercultural Knowledge and Competence AAC&U VALUE Rubric
• Pyramid Model of Intercultural Competence
• Interpretive-Interpersonal-Presentational Model
• Dollar Street
• Purposeful, Interactive Foreign Language Teaching
• Global Education Benchmark Group (BEBG) for Intercultural Learning in K-12
• TESOL Intercultural Interest Section (ICIS)
• Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI)
• Growing Intercultural Leaders program

Personal Identity Wheel challenges participants to reflect on their identities beyond social groups and get to know others in the group. They brainstorm words that describe their personal interests, skills, hobbies, etc. and then compare them with others.

Social Identity Wheel challenges participants to reflect on their identities in relation to social groups and get to know others in the group. They consider identities such as race, gender, and sexual orientation and contemplate how those identities manifest themselves in different environments and impact others’ perceptions.

Spectrum Activity challenges participants to reflect on their identities and how they are perceived in different contexts. They consider identities such as race, gender, and sexual orientation and contemplate how those identities may be privileged in different environments and therefore affect their interactions with others.

These three tools can be used in conjunction with each other. 

This collection includes resources by the creators of the pendulum model of intercultural competence development and maintenance.

We have been using the Amazing Race in Study Abroad support courses for many years at Purdue, but I think it has applications to the language classroom as well. You would just need to adapt the instructions, and I can envision two ways to do that: moving the context to a target-language area of the local community, or changing it to a web-based activity.

Do your students need some basic instruction and practice in listening and observation skills that can help them learn about culturally different others? Here are two new options from CILMAR: Thick Description and Emic Perspectives.

Here are 3 activities you can use to hone those cultural discovery skills in your language learners: Grocery Store Ethnography, YouTube Ethnography, Martian Anthropology.

There are a ton of resources linked from the Critical Incident tool under Links. Check out all the ways that you can get your learners to imagine themselves in a culturally fraught situation and think/talk/write through how they would respond.

Another great simulation is Barnga, especially if you want to highlight how different cultures "play by different rules" and "define winning in different ways". It is easy and cheap to run and students enjoy it.

Albatross is another oldie but goodie - it is relatively easy to perform and adapt to different contexts. The learning is both in the discomfort of the simulation itself and especially in the debriefing. I would recommend that newcomers to the simulation try to watch it done (I have seen videos online) before trying it themselves. What I like about simulations like this is that they give learners such an embodied experience to process and reflect on.

More kinesthetic options include these simulations that have been around forever in different forms: BaFa BaFa requires quite a bit of accoutrement, but Toothpicks and Cocktail party are easier and cheaper updates. Great for highlighting cultural differences in norms and behaviors and giving learners that embodied experience of discomfort in an unfamiliar environment. 

Draw a House is a good proxemics activity. Rather than the more typical focus of personal space bubbles in most proxemic learning exercises, this one emphasizes the differences in how people around the world arrange their living spaces. I like it because it reveals both similarities and differences. It also engages learners kinestheically.

This activity, the Scissors Game, has been around forever, but I still like it because it is simple, fun, kinesthetic, and effectively makes the point that students need to pay attention to other peoples' bodies. 

Don't neglect nonverbal communication in the language classroom! Not only can attention to nonverbals be very helpful to language learners in interpreting what they hear, but also they can get students into trouble if they assume universality in nonverbal communication because of the way it varies across cultures. HINT: To find tools on any topic, you can search Tags (under the Discover menu) or the full HubICL site (top right Search link) for key words such as nonverbal, gesture, proxemics, etc. These are the hits that come up in the Toolbox for nonverbal.

Whether you are assigning conversation partners amongst your own students, or pairing them with native speakers externally, it is extremely useful to provide some structure and guidance for their communication. To focus on cultural learning as well as listening and speaking practice, try out these sets of discussion prompts. The last one, Keep it Real, is an actual board game that would be great for in-person classroom use and really gets at issues of inclusion and social justice.

Aletha Stahl has a great collection of resources for assessing intercultural learning in language classrooms. See her favorites here.

I love that the Human Values Continuum can be so easily adapted. I linked here not only the original tool, but also collection posts that discuss it being applied in different ways, including virtually. See also the last link to another activity that would make a great follow-up: It Depends!