It has been one of the most interesting sessions for me so far both for its content and atmosphere. Dealing with different aspects of culture when learning a language in all sorts of contexts has become an indispensable component of the learning process.

Unfortunately, often we are not very good at developing cultural skills and have a lack of cultural ideas. But being ininquisitive about other culturers is essential for not making a fool of yourself. The session started with a small activity in which we had to talk to somebody else in the room and find what things people usually get wrong about each other's countries, which led us to consider what we actually need to know about other cultures?

Barry Tomalin presented a framework of 5 C's which includes

1. Cultural knowledge

2. Cultural communication

3. Cultural expectations: a particular set of behaviours not meeting which can cause problems

4. Cultural style

5. Cultural adaptation

What I really enjoyed about the session is that we approached them by engaging in a small activity with each other, which we later on reflected on.

What follows is a brief description of activities we did.

1. Cultural knowledge: Think about 5 true and false statements about a place and then the others decide which are which. It naturally helps in building the knowledge about another culture and getting rid of stereotypes.

2. Cultural communication: we had to work with Barry's Communication matrix, which helps to identify your comfort zone.

- Do you read b/w the lines or eager to have details?

- Do you prefer formal or informal communication?

- Are you fast or slow?

- Do you prefer to say what you mean or edit for politeness?

- Do you tend to get emotional or prefer to stay neutral?

- Are you expressive (Why/What) or concise (What/why)

Once you have answered these questions to yourself, think about a person you find difficult to communicate with and try to understand why.

3. Cultural expectations: here we had to discuss something that will make a bad and good impression on a person from another culture. I did this activity with a teacher from Turkey, and we found a lot of similarities between our cultures. We agreed that both cultures value hospitality. Maybe, because we found many similarities we did not get to the point of discussing things that make a bad impression. Maybe, you could help?

4. Cultural style - organization:

here we had to decide a) whether we are on time or in time kind of people, i.e., if it's hard for us to tolerate when the others are not on time or whether there is a room for delay and we feel comfortable being a little late; b) whether we are individualistic or collectivistic c) whether we live to work or work to live d) are we ‘job done' or ‘relationships first'.  Having answered these questions, think aout your perception of another style, compare the two and then reflect on your observations. Are they important? Do you have a need to change? If yes, how much?

5. Cultural adaptation: According to 80/20 principle, ‘a 20% change in behaviour yields an 80% change in attitude.' Here you need to write ‘I' statements and , e.g., I need to... I need them to...

I really enjoyed doing the activities offered during the session and when it was over I thought about how helpful they are in putting you in a reflective mode and how much they can help in shaping your treatment of other cultures.

It would be great if you could share some of your experiences of communicating with other cultures, reflect on their success or failure and think about the reasons for it.