The following lessons are designed for adult ELLs of a college or career age with a high intermediate level of language ability, which enables them to express their opinions fairly clearly and accurately. Learners are studying English as a foreign language (EFL) in their home environment. The learners in the class are interested in learning English communication for business or study purposes in which they will engage in intercultural communication.

These classes are part of a larger unit developed around the theme of communication and culture. Previous classes have had learners explore their own understanding of culture, stereotypes, and the role of good communication between cultures in building relationships. Students have learned some vocabulary for culture as well as stereotypes, and have focused on asking follow-up questions to keep a group discussion going. They have also used expressions for getting details about opinions such as:

How do you think communication affects relationships?

Where do you think you might need cross-cultural communication?

Why do you think you get that stereotype?

Students also learned to speak their main ideas clearly and give reasons for supporting their point by responding with expressions such as:

I think communication is important because…

I think I might need cross-cultural communication at work because…

I think I get that stereotype mainly from the media because…

The aim of the following activities is for learners to engage in conversation about intercultural situations while asking for and giving clarification, and expressing feelings both accurately and fluently.

Activity #1: “Story-Listening”

Aim: To practice listening phrases and paraphrasing

Objective: Learners will identify and appropriately use listening expressions and paraphrasing in a conversational setting.

Time: 20 minutes

Preclass Prep

Learners have already done an assignment outside of class in which they observed a conversation in their own language with particular attention to responses of the listener.

Warm-up

As a warm-up to the activity that will activate learners’ existing knowledge of dialogue patterns and provide the opportunity to recall known vocabulary about communication, learners express their observations about conversations in their culture to a partner.

The instructor prompts observations about what the listener does and says in response to the speakers in these dialogues. (What expressions do they use? How do they act? What kinds of things do they say?)

Learners will likely observe how most listeners are actively involved in the dialogue and respond with either verbal or nonverbal signals that tell the speaker they have been heard.

Class Discussion

The instructor points out similarities with listener responses in English. The class brainstorms expressions used for listening in English (Oh really? What was that like? You went to a concert?)

The instructor draws learners’ attention to the intonation and raised pitch of the expressions.

The instructor introduces the skill of paraphrasing, pointing out different methods for paraphrasing such as

1. the common question form as given above
2. Repeating the main idea with different words, or
3. by adding expressions plus a rephrasing of the listener’s understanding (So you mean…, You’re saying… Do you mean…?).
   
   

Partner Work

To practice these grammatical patterns and the intonation of paraphrasing, learners work in partners and tell a simple story to another learner (e.g., a favourite story from your childhood, a story from a TV show or movie, a story from a book you read).

The listener uses listening phrases to respond to the story and paraphrases with the three techniques practiced previously. The instructor monitors the partner work and listens for appropriate use.

After 2 minutes, the learners switch partners and tell the story they just heard. Again, the listener must listen actively, using listening phrases and paraphrasing.

Finally, learners meet with the person who told the story they just heard. Learners will tell their own story back to the original speaker. If paraphrasing is successful, the ending story is similar to the initial story. If it is not, learners check their accuracy by asking questions of the original speaker.

By initiating awareness about listening phrases, working on these patterns first through controlled practice, and then using the paraphrasing in their conversations, learners will both understand and be able to use paraphrasing and listening phrases appropriately.

Activity #2: Misunderstood Dialogues

Aim: To recognize that misunderstandings in speech are natural and practice ways to give clarification

Objective: Learners will identify and appropriately use expressions for giving clarification.

Time: 30 minutes

Learners recognize the frequency of misunderstanding in verbal communication and the importance of giving clarification through these stories. They also have an opportunity to recall previous knowledge of expressions and vocabulary used for giving clarification in speech.

Partner Work: Warm-up

Learners begin by sharing examples of when they have been misunderstood, explaining to a partner what happened and how they clarified for the listener. (When have you been misunderstood? One time, I was misunderstood when…)

Partner Work: Listen and Clarify

Learners listen to a recording of native English speakers misunderstanding each other, then provide clarification. They listen specifically for words giving clarification and write down these expressions. (Actually, I meant to say… Well, it’s more like… I mean…)

After checking with a partner about their responses from the listening, learners compile a list of expressions on the board. The instructor reads each of the expressions while learners listen for intonation and word stress.

Learners then practice these expressions with appropriate rhythm and stress.

Brainstorm and Dialogue

The class brainstorms situations where people from different cultures might misunderstand each other.

Learners work with a partner to choose one situation, create their own dialogues using these expressions, and present them to another group or the class.

Discussion and Reflection

Following the dialogue, the viewers discuss questions about the situation (What was the misunderstanding? How did culture affect this misunderstanding? How did they give clarification? What problems do you think might happen without giving clarification?)

Group members who presented the dialogue monitor the situation to ensure both speakers and listeners understand each other. This helps improve both accuracy and fluency in giving clarification as well as paraphrasing from the previous activity.

Activity #3: Cultural Feelings

Aim: To expand vocabulary related to feelings

Objective: Learners will point out differences between “feeling” vocabulary in the first language and English, and express their feeling.

Time: 45 minutes

Warm-up

The activity begins by eliciting feeling vocabulary that the learners already know. Learners talk with a partner about how they felt today and the situation in which they felt that way. (How did you feel today? What happened?)

Brainstorm and Discussion

Following this conversation, the learners brainstorm together other words to describe feelings in English.

The class notes differences between descriptions for feelings in their first language and in English. Some feelings are possible to describe in both languages, but some are unique to one language or the other even though the emotion itself is understood.

Partner Work

The instructor gives learners a large list of feeling words such as the “How do you feel?” handout (Garrity, Wampler, & Hess, 1998, p. 50). Learners categorize the words they know into similar feelings with a partner, and then check with another group to compare their categorization and share understandings of unknown words.

Learners then select any additional words to describe the situation they explained earlier. Learners explain the situation again to a different partner with more detail, using the additional words they selected.

Group Work

In order to practice the feeling vocabulary in a context and review learning from previous activities, have learners work in small groups. Give each group a situation card with a description of a cross-cultural interaction (Utley, 2004, p. 85).

With their small group, have learners role-play the situations using listening phrases and paraphrasing skills from Activity #1, expressions for giving clarification from Activity #2, and feeling vocabulary.

Groups discuss further about feelings and cross-cultural interactions drawing from the learners’ experience or from the role-plays done in class. (How did you feel in this role-play? What happened? What do you think will happen next?)

Through this activity, learners recognize and use vocabulary related to feeling and review the techniques and skills learned in previous activities. They engage in interesting dialogue related to intercultural encounters and reflect on their own experiences with language, culture, and feelings.

References

Garrity, R., Wampler, F. & Hess, S. (1998). Respect, responsibility & resolution. Charlottesville, VA: FSR Associates.

Utley, D. (2004). Intercultural resource pack: Intercultural communication resources for language instructors. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.

Cheryl Woelk coordinates Language for Peace and specializes in language and peace education in multicultural contexts. She holds an MA in education, TEFL certification, and a graduate certificate in peacebuilding.