Describes the five-week communication module that leads off an accelerated, interdisciplinary program offering a major in Human Services Administration intended for nontraditional students. Describes the program and the major educational principles underlying it. Discusses the communication module's five components: intercultural communication,…

The communication style of Asians is less "self exposing" than that of Americans, because Asian culture places more importance on the group than the individual. Integrating American-style adventure-education programs into Asian culture would require an understanding of adventure learning stripped of its cultural influences, understanding…

Describes how non-Southeast Asian instructors, over a two-year period, designed and taught courses for Cambodian and Vietnamese human-service workers. Discusses the difficulty of modifying standard questionnaires for these participants and the limited benefits of formal evaluation processes. Several insights, however, were gleaned through…

Presents an account of how a composition program can effectively address English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) writers' linguistic, strategic, and rhetorical differences without separating them from their native-English-speaking (NES) peers. The program provided a positive cross-cultural communication experience for the ESL and NES participants. (six…

A study investigated how 13 Chinese graduate students approach writing tasks, examining cultural assumptions and values underlying choices made in the process. Students were interviewed in Chinese by an interviewer of similar cultural background and asked to explain their understanding of writing and their frustration in learning to write English…

Suggests that immigrant Latino parents have an ethnotheory of child development that emphasizes being part of a group, and that this ethnotheory conflicts with teachers' views focusing on the development of individual potential. Analyzes three dialogues from parent-teacher conferences to illustrate parent-teacher cooperation or discord in the…

Presents four group experiential activities, primarily for adults and adolescents, focusing on diversity issues. Includes target group, group size, time and space needs, activity level, overview, goals, props, instructions, and suggestions for framing and debriefing the experience. Activities promote perspective taking, honest dialogue between…

Discusses bilingual education policy and reform in the context of indigenous languages of Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia, exploring the ideological paradox inherent in transforming a standardizing education into a diversifying one and in constructing a multilingual, multicultural national identity. Data come from policy documents and practitioner…

Focuses on how Yemeni American high school girls employ religious, Arabic, and secular texts as means for negotiating home and school worlds. Explores the hidden texts in their high school, and the texts of weddings and parties, of Arabic school, and of "muhathara" (lecture). Finds these girls' identities shifted to reflect their textual…

The cultural resource specialist at Glacier Bay National Park (Alaska) explains the collaborative efforts of park staff and the Hoonah Tlingit to overcome language and cultural barriers in documenting park place names and clan oral history and traditions. The new park-community relationship, which follows decades of conflict, includes training…

This plenary address reviews a number of recent Australian-based research studies and suggests that these studies lead to the inference that students learning English as a Second or Foreign Language need to be given room to communicate. Argues that teachers should give due regard to individual student differences, authenticity, cultural congruence…

This paper reports a qualitative case study of four preservice student teachers' professional learning experiences in an international field experience programme situated in the language and cultural immersion component of a PGDE (Primary) Programme in Hong Kong. Two of the student teachers undertook the international field experience in Australia…

We discuss the challenges of Web-based teaching for language teachers and then describe in detail an extended episode of misunderstanding that occurred between 2 students discussing their versions of history during a classroom-based, asynchronous telecollaborative project between learners of German in the United States and learners of English in…

It is impossible to teach well or conduct good research without some personal sense of involvement. Without attending to these apparently extraneous emotional aspects our work is impoverished. At the same time it is the needs of indigenous peoples as subjects in research and teaching which are paramount. The author touches on the relevance of…

As a result of their sociocultural backgrounds and previous educational experiences, both language learners and teachers bring to the classroom certain norms and expectations concerning appropriate teacher and learner roles and the learning-teaching practices they believe to be conducive to language learning. To prevent frustrations and failure…