Maximizing Study Abroad: Teaching Strategies for Language and Culture Learning and Use

1. Maximizing Study Abroad: Teaching Strategies for Language and Culture Learning and Use Presenters: Holly Emert and Rachel Shively The Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA) Summer Institute 2007 University of Minnesota

2. Institute Goals • To provide participants with: • a grounding in the philosophy and principles of strategies-based language and culture learning • hands-on experience using the MAXSA materials • an understanding of resources contained in MAXSA • opportunities to network with other participants to enhance their understanding & use of the guides • opportunities to design their own curricula and/or projects using MAXSA

3. MAXSA: A System’s View of Language and Culture Learning • Integration of language and culture learning • The learning process begins long before departure and extends past reentry • All individuals have a role to play (program administrators and staff, instructors, students) in multiple roles (as program developers, facilitators, and participants) • Workshop format: A train-the-trainers model designed to enhance participants’ understanding and skills for their own benefit as well as that of their target audience(s)

4. Content-Context-Process Need Holly’s graphic

5. Introductions Activity • This activity takes place in silence. • Draw 5-6 pictures that represent who you are. • Find one partner. Don’t show them your picture until asked to do so. • Hold the picture up at chest level so your partner can see it. • Examine your partner’s picture but…No talking!! • Each round lasts 1 minute; there will be 3 rounds.

6. Introductions Activity • On a sheet of paper, answer the following questions: • What did you like/dislike about the activity? • Was it easy to communicate what you wanted to? • What do you think are the learning goals of this activity?

7. Verbal Introductions • In pairs, please share the following information about yourself (maximum 2 minutes each): • Name • Professional position and institution • A brief overview of your culture- and language-learning experiences • Your goals for the workshop • Introduce your partner to the rest of the group by sharing the information s/he told you about him/herself. • Be sure to note other participants who share similar experiences/goals that you could network with!

8. Maximizing Study Abroad Surveys • Language Style Survey • A survey covering 11 dimensions of learning styles, grouped into the following categories: • Sensory/perceptual learning styles • Psychological type (personality) • Cognitive learning style • Language Strategy Use Inventory • Culture-Learning Strategies Inventory

9. Language Strategy Survey Activity: Similarities & Differences (LIG, p. X) • Find others in the room who share • 3 learning style similarities and • 3 learning style differences • What did you discover about yourself? About others?

10. MAXSA Surveys: Uses, Benefits, and Challenges • Contexts of use: When would you use the surveys? • Benefits: What are the benefits of using the surveys? • Challenges: What are the challenges of using the surveys?

11. MAXSA Surveys: Uses, Benefits, and Challenges • Contexts of use: When could you use the surveys? • During 1st/2nd week of language course • In study abroad orientations • For staff development • Benefits: What are the benefits of using the surveys? • Raise students’ awareness about specific strategies they can use and being strategic about language and culture learning • To help students set learning goals • To advise students who are frustrated about their progress in learning by giving them practical learning tips • Articulate learning that takes place in the study abroad environment in academic terms

12. Challenges: What are the challenges? • Time and sequencing constraints • Students think that they know all of the strategies already and that the survey didn’t teach them anything new - need to inoculate! • Lack of immediate application to practice. • Dissemination issues (if students aren’t face-to-face) Others?

13. Learning Styles Activity • PLACE: If you could learn in any environment you wanted, describe the place in which you would most like to learn. • PROCESS: What methods (processes) do you most like to use when you learn? • PERSON: If there was a person involved in guiding your learning experience, what personal and professional characteristics would you like that person to have?

14. Learning Styles • A learning style is the manner in which a learner perceives, interacts with, and responds to the learning environment. • Learning styles are often influenced by a person's cultural background. • Each individual has learning style preferences.

15. Learning Styles Components Learning styles have six components: (Oxford & Anderson, 1995; PPG pg. 33) • Cognitive: Habitual mental patterns • Affective: Attitudes, beliefs, and values that influence how learners learn • Behavioral: Learner tendencies to seek situations that “fit” best with their style • Executive: The extent to which learners look for order, organization, and closure in the learning process • Social: Preferred level of involvement with others while learning • Physiological: Body-based sensory and perceptual learning tendencies

16. Kolb’s Learning Styles (PPG pp. 39-47)

19. Rachel Shively User: I added this slide because if they’re new to Kolb, the 2-faceted nature of the model can be confusing I think. Also this sets up for the upcoming slides more explicitly. Two ways of viewing Kolb’s model • Four different learning preferences (i.e., CE, RO, AC, AE). • A cycle of learning that takes learners through four different stages in the learning process (NOT SURE ABOUT WORDING).

20. Using Kolb’s Learning Cycle as a Problem-Solving Tool • Taking Students Through the Learning Cycle (PPG, p. 39-42) • Read about Kolb’s four learning preferences on p. 39. • Read the critical incident about Joshua on p. 41-42. • Fill out the table on p. 42, describing learning preferences for problem solving. • Share your answers with a partner. • Group discussion: What were some of the strengths and weaknesses of each approach?

21. An Example of Taking Students through Kolb’s Learning Cycle with an in-class activity • Activity “Specific Communication Styles” (Students’ Guide, p. 130-132) • Reflective observation: Show students a dialogue or video in which different communication styles have caused miscommunication and ask students to make hypotheses about the source of the miscommunication. • Abstract conceptualization: Give a lecturette about communication styles across cultures. • Active experimentation: Have students complete the activity, applying the theory to real-life examples. • Concrete experience: Interview a host country individual about communication styles in their culture. • Reflective observation: Discussion of the activity.

22. Applications of Learning Styles for Instructional Design and Delivery • Kolb’s experiential learning cycle can serve as a comprehensive framework for instructional design in the following ways: • It can inform the sequencing of activities • Awareness of each student’s learning style can be used to anticipate reactions to various activities and teaching styles • Knowledge of cognitive, cultural, and learning style differences can help structure language and culture learning opportunities that balance challenge and support in both content and process (Janet M. Bennett, 1998)

23. Maximizing Study Abroad: Teaching Strategies for Language and Culture Learning and Use, Day Two PLEASE CONSIDER SITTING NEXT TO A DIFFERENT PARTICIPANT TODAY!

24. Culture and Culture Learning

25. Objects Activity • What is it? • What is it used for? • What might it tell us about the group that uses it? • How did you come to your decision about the object(s)?

26. How We Learn About Others • Positivism (social science approach) • Reality is knowable and predictable • Focus on quantitative methods • Interpretive approach • Reality is subjective and resides with each individual • Focus on qualitative methods • Critical approach • Reality is subjective and based in power relationships • Focus on examination of texts and cultural products (media)

27. An Updated Framework: Dialectics (tensions) • Emphasizes process, relationships, and contradictions • Six dialectics: • Cultural-Individual • Personal-Contextual • Differences-Similarities • Static-Dynamic • Past-Present-Future • Privilege-Disadvantage • Others? (See Martin & Nakayama)

28. Culture Learning • …refers to the strategies and processes students can use to learn about their own and another culture as well as communicate and relate effectively with people from other cultures in any context, domestic or international (LIG pg. 49) • There are many ways to learn about culture

29. Theories/Models of Culture Learning • Multicultural perspective (P. Adler) • Intercultural sensitivity (M. Bennett) • Constructive marginality (J. Bennett) • Intercultural (communicative) competence (J. Martin) All of these models (and others) inform knowledge and practice

30. What is Culture? • Take a moment to think about what the word “culture” means to you. • Write a brief definition of “culture” on a piece of paper. • You will be asked to share your definition.

31. What is Culture? • Culture is… • What is your culture? • Culturally Diverse You activity (PPG pg. H-23; LIG pg. DM-35; Students’ p. 44) • How we define culture • How We Define Culture: The Iceberg Analogy (PPG p. H-25 to H-32; Students’ p. 46)

32. Learning about Culture but Who’s Culture? • Culture is a system—it is the sum total of what a particular group of people has created together, share, and transmit (Paige, 1990). • Cultural competence refers to the ability to perform and behave appropriately in one’s own culture. Almost everyone is culturally competent but that does not mean they understand or can explain their own culture.

33. Cultural self-awareness means understanding culture in general and one’s own culture in particular. It means being culturally competent (in one or more cultures) with the added ability of understanding and being able to explain one’s own culture.

34. Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) • …emphasizes culture learning and adaptation skills that can be applied to any situation. • Interculturally competent individuals tend to be more effective when dealing with culturally diverse others of their own and other culture groups.

35. Dimensions of ICC include… • Cultural competence and cultural self-awareness • Culture-general understanding of cultural differences, e.g., Big C/little c • Culture-specific knowledge of two or more cultures • Skills and ability to behave appropriately in multiple cultures • Culture-learning skills What sort of sequencing of content does this suggest?(see LIG pp. 54-55)

36. Becoming Familiar with Culture: The Iceberg Analogy • Related Activities: • Joshua and the Iceberg (SG, p. 46-50; PPG, p. 74) • Identifying Aspects of Culture (SG, p. 50-51) • What did you learn from this activity? Would you use it in your own context? When? For what purposes?

37. Culture learning requires… • Self-reflection of learners about personal experiences with cultural difference • Process-oriented learning versus solely fact-based learning • Exploration of worldviews that differ from one’s own …and all of these can be challenging

38. Language Learning in Study Abroad • PLACEHOLDER SLIDE FOR POSSIBLE SECTION ON LANGUAGE LEARNING - AM WORKING ON IT.

39. Using MAXSA in Varied Contexts: Examples • On-site, for-credit university class based on the MAXSA materials • Introducing MAXSA into an existing study abroad program (“London model”) • University-level language classes that integrate the MAXSA materials into a set curriculum • Advising for university language majors and study abroad students • Intercultural training and professional development

40. Placeholder for Varied Contexts for MAXSA

41. Maximizing Study Abroad: Teaching Strategies for Language and Culture Learning and Use, Day Three

42. Facilitation and Sequencing

43. Process and Content: Balancing Challenge and Support • For students to make the most gains in language and culture learning in the classroom or abroad when is it appropriate for them to: • Rest? • Be challenged? • The Challenge and Support Model (J. Bennett, 1993) provides a useful framework for learning (see LIG pp. 54-56)

44. Process: Lower to Higher Challenge Lecture Film, Video Reading Instrument Critical Incident Case Study Fish Bowl Role-Play Simulation

45. Content: Lower to Higher Challenge Culture Interpersonal Perception Language Use Cultural Stereotypes Nonverbal Communication Communication Styles Values (note: potentially threatening) Problem Solving Gender Intercultural Adaptation Cultural Privilege & Race Contexts of Power Sexual Orientation

46. Culturally Diverse Environments and Their Stress Factors (PPG p. 57) • Differences in cultural values, beliefs, practices • Ethnocentrism • Language issues • Cultural immersion • Cultural isolation • Language • Prior intercultural experience • Expectations • Visibility/invisibility • Power and control • Status

47. The Intensity Factors Index (PPG pgs. 57-60) • Thinking about your own audience(s), please fill out the chart on p. 59. • How can this index be used in your work?

48. Cultural Variables • Diverse Learners and Key Cultural Variables • Learning styles • Communication styles • Non-verbal communication patterns • Cultural values • Cultural identities • Issues of cultural adaptation • Levels of intercultural sensitivity (the ABCs)

49. The Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity “As a culture-general developmental model of intercultural competence, the DMIS offers a way for language teachers and study abroad professionals to (1) assess the developmental readiness of their students to pursue certain kinds of intercultural learning and (2) select and sequence learning activities that contribute to their students’ development of general intercultural competence.” (Bennett, Bennett, & Allen, 2003: 246)

50. Key Intercultural Sensitivity Concepts • Intercultural sensitivity is developmental. • Intercultural sensitivity levels represent distinct worldview structures regarding cultural difference in which affect, behavior, and cognition regarding cultural difference varies. • Higher levels of intercultural sensitivity can be acquired and learned, but cannot be assumed. It is not a naturally occurring human quality.