Preparing Think Piece Two

As you prepare for your Think Piece 2, we thought you would appreciate a week to consider how you might expand your ideas for your Think Piece 2 submission. This section will provide you with the course’s Think Piece 2 assignment and four extended content areas to expand upon in your Think Piece 2. Subsequent links to new “chapters” in this unit will provide sample essays/reports, sample outlines, a sample grading rubric, and additional resources to help with the assignment.

The “Think Piece 2” Objective

The second learning unit, where we asked the question, “Who are you?”  introduced you to the topics of perception in Chapter 4 , verbal communication in Chapter 5, nonverbal communication in Chapter 6, and listening & compassionate listening in Chapter 7. In Think Piece 2 (posted below and in your course D2L Content Area), you will focus on these areas as you probe a culture, co-culture, or personal/social identity other than your own.

The goal of this unit is to promote the process of acquiring a higher level of intercultural communication competence necessary for professional growth and personal fulfillment. Also, it gives you sharp insight into persons of another culture and an appreciation for one’s role and responsibility within our globalized world. In short, “[c]ollaboration and commerce between nations and across cultures is an unavoidable necessity of modern living. The success of those endeavors hinges upon the competence with which each party interacts with the other. Further, these interactions can be beneficial, not just in terms of each group realizing their respective goals, but also at the level of the individuals involved” (Cavanaugh, 2015, p. 1). Presenting and encouraging the transformative process of learning practical interviewing skills are vital to improving intercultural communication competence. One can “effectively adapt verbal and nonverbal messages to the appropriate cultural context” (Neuliep, 2018, p. 37).

Additional Content to Consider for Think Piece 2

Link to New OER Books & Creative Commons Content

We have shared materials within this OER textbook to synthesize general concepts central to the study of Intercultural Communication. As you prepare Think Piece #2, additional materials outside this book will be helpful to narrow your topic. Instead of copying and pasting additional materials into our course e-book, we are linking the materials here for your consideration, as listed below. In Weeks 9 & 10 of our Spring 2022 RTCTC COMM 2100 course, you will not need to prepare class discussions or quizzes as Week 9 is “MEA” week in Minnesota, and Week 10 is dedicated to writing Think Piece 2. During Weeks 9 & 10, you will also meet with Lori for your midterm conferences.

Therefore, for Weeks 9 & 10, you will explore the following links to learn more about topics of your choice related to the Think Piece 2 assignment.

Culture Shock

• Exploring Intercultural Communication’s Chapter on Introduction to Culture Shock & Managing Culture Shock
• Peace Corps’s (simple but effective) handout on Culture Shock
• Intercultural Business Communication’s chapter on Culture Shock

Tourism

• Intercultural Communication for the Community College’s chapter on Tourism

Anti Racism

• A student resource kit on Anti Racism

Prejudice & Racism

• Intercultural Business Communication’s chapter on Prejudice & Racism

Our Own Book’s Subsequent Chapters on Specific Co-Cultures

We will return to topics like those listed above and below in the third unit of “What are we doing together?” Please visit these chapters in our OER e-book if your Think Piece 2 relates to these topics.

• LGBTQ+ Co-Culture
• Meet Laura & learn about  Native American Co-Cultures
• Meet Marco & learn about Mexican-American Co-Cultures
• Meet Cindy (again) & learn about the Hmong Co-Culture
• Meet Abdullahi and Tammad & learn about the Somali-American Co-Cultures
• Guests whom students often interview:
  • Meet Kim Sin and learn about the Cambodian Community
  • Meet Al Lun shares his story of being the “Permanent Other.”
  • Meet Laura (also see link above)

About Assignments:

Intercultural communication courses ask students to demonstrate their progress toward intercultural communication competence. To this end, written and oral assignments focus on personal reactions to and acquired knowledge and analysis of certain aspects of another culture relevant to effective intercultural communication. Doing so may lead to some measure of intercultural competence. In the course, discussions posts, written work, and class assignments as students to  1) learn about, and be aware of, one’s own culture and how it has shaped who and what one is so that honest and sound research of another culture to which they do not belong may occur; 2) interview someone from, or closely associated with, that culture and; 3) analyze the process and your intercultural communication.

Review Think Piece Project #2: Who Are You? (200 Points)

You will choose the essay, report, or creative project option for this assignment.

Questions? Just ask Lori. Remember, whichever option you choose, the focus is on intercultural communication and our second question this semester: “Who are you?” In other words, you’ll explore a co-culture, culture, or personal identity different from the one to which you belong.

Note about Honesty, Plagiarism, and Integrity

Again, this assignment concerns YOU and YOUR co-cultures, personal identities, and reflections. Please do not plagiarize; there were three instances of plagiarism just last semester. I use “Turn It In” – which compares your essay to other submissions worldwide. I will see “similarity reports” that show when papers are plagiarized (or copied). Do not jeopardize your grade and integrity – I had to report peers for plagiarism last semester. I created three options so you would find a unique, personal way to express yourself. Each textbox below outlines the assignment choices. You will also find this assignment in D2L’s Content Area.

Ideas for Think Piece 2

Interviews

The “Who are You Unit” is an intercultural communication learning module providing you a unique opportunity to better understand a given culture outside of, or other than, your own culture. Four primary concepts and skill areas central to intercultural communication and necessary for conducting an intercultural interview are perception and perception-checking, nonverbal communication and verbal communication, and listening. The format used best to impart the four skill areas central to intercultural interviewing includes (1) a definition of the skill area itself; (2) a discussion of the practice or use of this skill area in intercultural communication contexts; (3) questions to consider for the effective use of the skill area; and (4) a prompt or queue for the development of an essay assignment reflecting on the intercultural interview. All told, we consider what is learned from the preparation for the interview, the tenor and substance of the interview itself, and a reflection upon how the interview transforms or deepens an understanding of both the interviewee’s culture and the student’s own culture. The unit contains insightful student observations. The appendix provides helpful comments culled from past student papers. External resources, class activities, and videos will also be provided for an opportunity to further and deepen understanding of the four skill areas (perception, verbal and non-verbal communication, and listening).

First and foremost, intercultural interviews should be conducted in a safe environment enabling both interviewer and interviewee to ask genuine, honest, and respectful questions with the responses given. The interview must be more than a loose exercise in stream-of-consciousness questioning. Hence, preparation for the interview is necessary as questions and prompts will need some connection or relevance to the student’s essay. It helps to read corresponding chapters and sections from the primary textbook and other relevant resources. Please pay attention to the cultural patterns and taxonomies/typologies we read about in Chapter 2. Choose one or more concepts fitting to the essay and include one or more concepts with which you are comfortable, along with concepts including, but not limited to, cultural identity, intercultural verbal and nonverbal communication, perception, and listening.

Sample questions for an interview may include, in some fashion, how the interviewee experienced a collective vs. an individualistic family structure. Consider the variety of questions one could ask:  Did you feel like a team or more as individuals in your family? Did your country stress what was “good for the country” or “what is good for the individual citizen?” Can this be explained? How were family decisions made, where did you go to college, and who was responsible for what chores

Consider the questions to ask during the interview and the course content one would like to explore. At the same time, one will want to “just listen” without asking questions for some of the interview time. Chapter 7 focused on using “active listening” and “compassionate listening skills,” depending on the context. In the following pages, we offer ideas, samples, and outlines.

Site Visits

Learning about cultures found not abroad or in far-flung areas of the United States but “in one’s backyard” is a valuable means to begin or work towards cultural communication competence. This process can start by visiting local culturally-based or oriented nonprofit organizations, historical buildings and sites, museums, art galleries, restaurants, places of worship, and other sites. This unit explores the many opportunities to learn about co-cultures locally in Minnesota. As the OER book expands, I will add more cultural locations. Please read the Site Visit section of our e-book for ideas on where you can go to learn more about “culture in your backyard.”

Learning more about various cultures “in your backyard” might include visiting nonprofit organizations, historical buildings, museums, art galleries, restaurants, cultural centers, and other sites. You are welcome to develop cultural conversations with the contacts in this unit or find your own contacts.

Learn more about ideas for site visits in the Cultural Highlights Section of our e-book.

Creative Projects

Finally –  a quick comment about creative projects. You are welcome to explore your artistic expressions in an art project. One of your former classmates painted her cultural identity for Think Piece Two – you might follow her lead and paint the vision you have of a co-culture (of course, like your classmate, you’ll need to chat with Lori to determine how you will demonstrate the analysis/research you did in the preparation of this project). You might produce a video. You could create an oral history of relatives who live in another country (we found our Swedish family and our Finnish family and did that!). Creative projects exploring “Who are you?” could even demonstrate/simulate the concepts linked above.