Category: Ideas

I attended another online session about developing intercultural competence at The London School of International Communication.

The expert talked about the understanding of cultural competence, greater cultural self-awareness, and some tips to communicate across cultures. Knowledge, skills and attitudes are three important areas reflect in cultural competence. People can acquire cultural knowledge from books, online recourses but knowledge is a huge area that will never end. She suggested people who want to develop cultural competence pick their relevant culture and acquire more knowledge.  

The London School of International Communication also provides an online quiz to test intercultural competence. It includes two parts which are cultural knowledge and cross-cultural communication skills. By doing this quiz, I found I lack cultural knowledge of many countries such as Brazil, India and so on.

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Reflecting on my project, last week I wanted to narrow down my research topic of cultural competence to share cultural experiences in London, but cultural competence is the ability to interact with people from different cultural backgrounds, not only learning British culture. So, I want to make my project focus on the cross-cultural communication skills part of cultural competence.

I made a quiz based on the activities from the UAL language centre and I got 9 results. Most of them have knowledge about cultural competence but none of them got all correct in this quiz. 

Flexible behaviour is one of the competencies that most of them are not familiar with because only one person chose the right answer.

The illustration of flexible behaviour is “Adapt your own way of doing things and communicating to suit different contexts and situations.”

However, not everyone has awareness of flexible behaviour when having intercultural communication.

This also happened when I had a conversation with my stakeholder who was learning Chinese.

I asked him “Do you cook at home in your spare time?” in Chinese. 

And he answered “Yes. Where else could I cook?”

Then I realized the phrase “At home” misled him. “At home” can be deleted in this sentence but it’s a common way to say that in Chinese (I double-checked with my friends). I should not assume he will understand before I asked this question in my usual way.

At this stage, I am going to look at how “flexible behaviour” help people improve intercultural communication skills to achieve cultural competence. I will create an intervention about this.

By thinking about the difference between different cultural backgrounds, I tried to narrow down the topic and focus on the stakeholders who are living in London, UK. It’s easier for me to collect data and in London, we can meet people from different backgrounds so people always need cultural competence. The language part of this project can be only English.

My new research topic is: How can young people develop cultural competence in London?

However, I still need to consider what area of cultural competence I am going to focus such as language, embarrassment, traveling. I am going to do a SWOT analyse to narrow down my research topic.

https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTMC_05.htm

https://www.uexpress.com/life/miss-manners

The question at moment: How can I measure people’s level of cultural competence?

I am thinking about if I can create an intervention to test it.

Secondary research:

The Four Levels of Cultural Awareness

https://www2.pacific.edu/sis/culture/pub/1.6.2-_the_four_level_of_cul.htm

I. Unconscious incompetence 

This has also been called the state of blissful ignorance. At this stage, you are unaware of cultural differences. It does not occur to you that you may be making cultural mistakes or that you may be misinterpreting much of the behavior going on around you. You have no reason not to trust your instincts. 

II. Conscious incompetence

You now realize that differences exist between the way you and the local people behave, though you understand very little about what these differences are, how numerous they might be, or how deep they might go. You know there’s a problem here, but you’re not sure about the size of it. You’re not so sure of your instincts anymore, and you realize that there are some things you don’t understand. You may start to worry about how hard it’s going to be to figure these people out. 

III. Conscious competence

You know cultural differences exist, you know what some of these differences are, and you try to adjust your own behavior accordingly. It doesn’t come naturally yet—you have to make a conscious effort to behave in culturally appropriate ways—but you are much more aware of how your behavior is coming across to the local people. You are in the process of replacing old instincts with new ones. You know now that you will be able to figure these people out if you can remain objective. 

IV. Unconscious competence

You no longer have to think about what you’re doing in order to do the right thing. Culturally appropriate behavior is now second nature to you; you can trust your instincts because they have been reconditioned by the new culture. It takes little effort now for you to be culturally sensitive.

Research Question:

How can young people develop cultural competence when they are living abroad?

Link: https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_l6fFi_Q=/

My new question is ‘How can young people develop cultural competence when they are living abroad?’

Cultural competence is an important skill that can help people to develop meaningful relationships with people of various cultural background. 

From the research, I found even people who are living abroad, they may not develop their cultural competence because they need to accept both cultures from their home country and host country.

And there are three ways to develop cultural competence which is have self-awareness, understand people’s worldview, and value and have intervention skills by building cross-cultural bridges.

Social scientists across many disciples cite gaining self-awareness as a first crucial step in developing cultural competence. 

I want to help people to build self-awareness regarding their own culture. 

So I created Intervention 4 to test if people can enhance self-awareness by understanding their family culture. 

References

DESAI, P.P., DODOR, B.A. and CARROLL, E.B., 2020. Exploring One’s Family Heritage to Enhance Self-awareness: A Step Toward Developing Cultural Competence. Family Relations, 69(1), pp. 76-91.

Extensionpublications.unl.edu. 2021. Cultural Competence: An Important Skill Set for the 21st Century. [online] Available at: <https://extensionpublications.unl.edu/assets/html/g1375/build/g1375.htm> [Accessed 23 July 2021].

Improving Cultural Competence. 2015. Rockville: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

Kommers, S, & Bista, K (eds) 2020, Inequalities in Study Abroad and Student Mobility : Navigating Challenges and Future Directions, Taylor & Francis Group, Milton. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [26 July 2021].

Maddux, W. and Galinsky, A., 2009. Cultural borders and mental barriers: The relationship between living abroad and creativity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96(5), pp.1047-1061.

Tadmor, C., Galinsky, A. and Maddux, W., 2012. Getting the most out of living abroad: Biculturalism and integrative complexity as key drivers of creative and professional success. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 103(3), pp.520-542.Posted on 24th July 2021Categories InterventionsLeave a commenton Intervention 4Edit”Intervention 4″Accessibility StatementTheme accessibilityTerms and Conditions

RESEARCH QUESTION:

How can young people achieve their possible selves and shape their self-identity when they are living in a foreign country? 

With globalisation, many people have experiences of living abroad for studying or working and this can be a chance for them to develop themselves and learn different skills. However, there are many issues they will meet when they are living abroad such as housing instability, language problems, culture shock, homesickness. This project aims to help young people achieve their possible selves and shape their self-identity when they are living in a foreign country.

STAKEHOLDERS:

People who live in a foreign country (NEED HELP)

Local communities/organisations

Local citizens

INTERVIEWEES

• Shaun: An Australian who is living in Colombia.
• Jonathan: An Australian who has experience of living in China.
• Deborah: An British who is living in Greek.

OBJECTS:

Language help

Culture

PLAN OF INTERVENTIONS:

1. Online event: experience sharing, language learning to test if people’s self-identity can be improved when be encouraged by native speakers.
2. Long term – Online community: Provide help before going to a foreign country and after arriving in a foreign country.

Living in a foreign country (People’s experience in comments)

• Lose the majority of your friends

• New friends come and go (Passing through destination)

• Go home or go somewhere new

Norton (2000) defined identity as “how a person understands his or her relationship to the world, how that relationship is constructed across time and space, and how the person understands possibilities for the future” (p. 5).

Self-presentation is defined as “behavior that attempts to convey some information about oneself or some image of oneself to other people” (Baumeister & Hutton, 1987, p. 71)

Self-presentation in a second language is not always easy: Research has shown that learners may feel that they are treated as small children by native speakers (e.g., Pellegrino, 2005) and, as a result, may feel that they have a “reduced personality” (Harder, 1980) or even that they are less intelligent because of their lack of proficiency in the target language, which may prevent them from presenting their complete personality in the second language environment.

DU, H., 2015. American College Students Studying Abroad in China: Language, Identity, and Self-Presentation. Foreign Language Annals, 48(2), pp. 250-266.

Discover a new culture

Learn a new language “a different language is a different vision of life” F.FELLINI

Develop skills outside of a classroom setting

Add a boost to your CV (?) communicator, multicultural

Learn more about yourself you have to navigate everything on your own, break out your comfort zone

Change your perspective about where you’re from

Truly appreciate difference and diversity

Become a creative problem solver

Become a future global leader “what do you want to do in your life”

It’s a life-changing experience

InterNations Communities

A welcoming community of open-minded individuals who share your experiences.

https://www.internations.org/about-internations/

Language Learning

https://preply.com/

https://www.italki.com/

How does culture shape creativity?

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01219/full

Do Multicultural Experiences Make People More Creative? If So, How?

https://www.in-mind.org/article/do-multicultural-experiences-make-people-more-creative-if-so-how