Intercultural Training; The Options for a BE Trainer

Of course any issue covered by Chia Soun Chong gains immediate attention and debate.  And of course it is great to see some of my mentors like Marjorie Rosenberg and Ed Pegg add their thoughts.  So, I figured it might be time for me to reflect a bit on my approach to intercultural communication and how it applies to my business English training.

I have identified several options for the BE trainer to train the effect of cultural interference on their communication.

Option 0 - Ignore it.

Option 1 - Train 'above the surface' aspects for various cultures (etiquette, dos and don'ts).

Option 2 - Train values, norms, and beliefs for selected countries pertaining to class or likely interactions (often BRIC and US/UK).

Option 3 - Train learners about their own culture (whole iceberg) to raise awareness of differences and perceptions.

Option 4 - Train overarching concepts of inter-cultural communication (e.g high/low context, ethnocentrism, non-verbal message codes, uncertainty avoidance).

Option 5 - Train learners to recognize when culture has affected communication and how to resolve it.  This is often in the form of 'critical incident' training.

In discussion with Carl Dowse, he offered another option, giving learners a skill set (such as that provided in Bob Dignan's book Communicating Internationally in English) for the learners to handle a range of cultures and personalities.

Each of these options has advantages and disadvantages and the choice should depend on the training situation.  For this reason, the trainer should know when to apply various resources in training.  Course books handle this in various ways.  For example, Market Leader has tended to go for option 1, whereas Intelligent Business has gone with a mix of option 3 and 4 with an introduction to inter-cultural communication concepts and a rating scale for the learner to assess their own culture.  Either could be appropriate depending on the learners.

For this reason, we need some kind of assessment criteria for how to introduce this into our training.  I offer several criteria...

Needs - what do they want?
Time - how much time do we have and are we sacraficing language work?
Trainer and learner expertise/experience
ROI - how much will the training impact their communication effectiveness?
Behavior change - how much will the learners change/have to change to meet the goal?
Relavence - how likely are they to experience these concepts?
General to specific - where do we balance dealing with culture and handling personality types?

On this last point, we need to assess which cultures we are talking about here.  Ed Pegg and I were on the verge of a book deal on this one in Glasgow.  Hopefully, he can remember what we talked about.  Are they purely national?  Probably not.  Instead, they most likely include a whole range of cultural influences.

At the end of day, we can look at the materials we have and determine which option is best.  In my case, I most often find that option 3, teaching them their own culture from an outsider point of view, is most effective.  I train monoligual and often monocultural classes.  For them, the greatest benefit comes from seeing that what is normal and understood amongst themselves is often a far cry from what outsiders see, hear, and believe.

To give you an idea of the training, I have included the template presentation I give to my German learners.  Not all slides are used in training and this presentation does not include the discussion or activities which emerge from it.  These slides are generally introduced with the scenario: "This is training for employees in the US.  Your job is to review the presentation and determine if it is accurate and helpful for them."

Germany intercultural communication training

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So with all these options, it really is up to the trainer and learner to decide on what the right course of action is.  Simply training culture merely because it is in the material is not the best plan.  Additionally, not considering it at all is certainly not appropriate.  As business English trainers, our mandate is to improve the communication our clients.  If we stop at the present perfect continuous we are not realzing our value sold.

New Technologies, New Can Do Statements

A report recently on Bayern 2 about how Twitter and Facebook are developing languages similar to the telegraph in the 1800s got me thinking.  For the sake of coolness, let's ignore the fact that I was listening to Bayern 2, the dry public radio station for intellectuals in Southern Germany.  But they made an interesting point.  So I started thinking about how workplace software is changing communication, and how I should adapt.

First, most of my students use Microsoft communicator in the work place to carry on simple question and answer communication events.  This real-time communication medium introduces a couple of things.

• One sentence requests for updates and one sentence responses.
• Short descriptions of what is happening around them.
• Talking about events in the immediate future.
• Spoken grammar in written form.
• Use of emoticons to replace body language and facial expressions.

In fact, the communication method is exactly what we used to do in school before texting.  We wrote notes on paper and pass them around the class when the teacher was writing on the chalkboard.

I have been using strips of paper for years in the classroom to help scaffold telephone conversations and meetings.  But now I see that reenacting real-time communication with note passing could provide engaging supported practice in all kinds of situations.  In fact, it wouldn't even be unrealistic... we would in fact be practicing a skill they use everyday.  Speaking with communicator.

To many teachers this will be nothing new... you are probably using SMSs and Facebook for this, but to be honest... my aging, privacy-rights obsessed learners are not willing to take that kind of leap.  Using it as a supported practice exercise facilitates the main goals and trains this kind of interaction.

Second, many students now work in some kind of virtual team.  For the most part, I do not have trouble adapting to the fact that my students will probably never meet their English speaking contacts (goodbye greeting visitors!).  But, in my opinion we need to introduce a few skills to our traditional toolbox to suit of their special requirements.  Most are based on the fact that students must not only use the IT system to communicate, but also talk about the IT system.  Here are some proposed 'can do' statements.

• Can ask for and give virtual directions in an IT enviroments (tell someone how to find a document on the server/internet, ask where they should send the updated document in the workflow, direct users through an application)
• Can ask questions to fill out a form  Can describe how to complete a database form.  (Think about when you call customer support and they tell you to go to the website and they will walk you through the fix online.  This is not limited to solving IT problems.)
• Can describe documents and document formats, including spreadsheets, word processor features, presentation themes and layouts (most virtual teams must decide on and follow certain reporting formats and structures).
• Can find detailed information using appropriate search terms in knowledge database or search engine.  (This is sooo difficult in L2)  This goes beyond websearches and trains them how to build search strings and filter results.
• Can understand and participate in a collaborative discussion board to solve problems and make decisions.

Can you think of anymore we should add to the list?

Note, these are not exclusively for IT professionals, rather tasks all workers must perform on a daily basis in English.  Sadly, the most formal material I have seen in coursebooks doesn't go past introducing 'copy, paste, delete'.  We can do better.  I will have to test some lesson ideas on these and I will keep you updated on the effectiveness.  But I would love to hear your thoughts.