My zones of intercultural encounters

For me intercultural contacts are not only face-to-face encounters, I experience them when discuss stories of my friends, communicate through the Internet, read literature, or watch movies. In other words, everything that helps me touch or feel other culture is an intercultural encounter for me.

My interpersonal zone includes talks with my friends and exchanging postcards with people all over the world. I use web-site www.postcrossing.com for exchanging postcards. I’ve received about 50 postcards from more than 20 countries just for one year! There are postcards even from New Zealand and Chili.

My ex-classmate Yana studies in the UK. I appreciate her stories about British people, shops, educational system, etc. I admire her photos. I hope one day I’ll visit Brighton. Due to her stories and pictures, I feel well-prepared for such a visit J.

As for my institutional zone, I can mention my group mate Jang. Frankly speaking, I was a little bit afraid of speaking with him and he had never spoken to me. One day he asked me to explain some materials on statistics during a lecture. After the lecture we had a really nice talk about the Chinese language. Since that talk we have been getting on really well.

When I was a child, I didn’t like summer camps very much, but when I became a student, I discovered volunteer camps. My first volunteer camp in Galshany, a small Belarusian village, was unforgettable. We helped to reserve the ruins of the castle and talked a lot with some Polish students who volunteered as well. I realized how rural culture can differ from city one. In villages people – even small children – are used to greeting every person in the streets, even if they don’t know him/her.

My first time abroad was the holidays with my parents in Turkey. We were slugging on the beach, side by side with foreigners… keeping silence. It was nice, but I prefer something more active. I was lucky to participate in a summer school for students in Sweden last year. Young people from all Europe, combination of education and having fun are things I appreciate a lot.

2. †Some of the words in Ann's comment are highlighted. They all mean either a type of an intercultural encounter, a characteristic of it or an action that accompanies it. Classify the highlighted words filling the Vocabulary map below.

Look through Ann's comments again and complete the Vocabulary map with other relevant items.

3.†Think about your own intercultural encounters and words that can help you describe them (names of countries, nationalities, people, events and activities, etc.). Include these words into your Vocabulary map.

The materials from Grammar and Vocabulary File may be of use for you here. See pp. …

4. †Using your Vocabulary map fill in the scheme for your intercultural encounters.

5.^ Show the scheme to your group-mate, let him/her choose one of your encounters and then tell her/him about

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Date: 2016-04-22; view: 1235