Thoughts on Intercultural Communication...

I enjoyed the readings and discussions on the intercultural communication topic. I believe strongly in the inclusion of culture in the teaching of a foreign language and can definately see the value of using intercultural communication in the FL classroom. As stated in some of the articles, it is important to have discussions in order to prepare students for such communication to make sure that everyone is on the "same page" to begin with. I could see how having differing expectations could certainly create tensions and missed communication. I also do think that it is important to make students aware of the existence of cultural stereotypes so that they are not reinforcing cultural stereotypes through the communications. In all, I think that it would be neat to use intercultural communication in the classroom. It is the modern version of pen-pals and I think that this is something that students (particularly at the middle/high school level) could get really excited about!