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SELF-ASSESSMENT OF YOUR INTERCULTURAL COMPETENCE
This page is aimed at helping you self-assess your intercultural competence (ICC) and language learning during the past semester. The aim is for you to carefully reflect on the experiences you have had in the past two months and to try to understand if and how this has changed your attitudes and beliefs about cultures (yours and 'the other') and/or improved your language skills.
First there is a brief summary of ICC by describing the five elements that make up ICC. This is followed by a series of questionnaires that will guide you in your reflection.
Intercultural competence in brief[1]
The following is a list of the five elements that make up ICC. Each description is followed by questions directly related to our context that you should ask yourselves to start considering the state of your own ICC.
Attitudes: curiosity and openness, readiness to suspend disbelief about other cultures and belief about one's own.
- Were you able to accept that what you thought about American culture (often based on what you see in the media) may not have been true?
- Were you able to accept that the Americans might have beliefs about your culture that you do not think are true? Did you feel offended? Were you open to explaining your point of view?
Knowledge: of social groups and their products and practices in one's own and in one's interlocutor's country, and of the general processes of societal and individual interaction.
- Did you actually learn things about American lifestyles, group dynamics, etc. that were different from what you had expected?
- Did talking about your own culture help you reflect on it from new points of view?
- Did the wiki project help you learn new things about the target culture as well as your own?
Skills of interpreting and relating: ability to interpret a document or event from another culture, to explain it and relate it to documents from one's own.
- Were you able to successfully find and interpret American documents for your wiki project?
- Did you find that they were different from or similar to equivalent documents in Italy?
Skills of discovery and interaction: ability to acquire new knowledge of a culture and cultural practices and the ability to operate knowledge, attitudes and skills under the constraints of real-time communication and interaction.
- Were you able to ask ‘difficult’ questions or did you tend to keep the conversation on un-controversial, or ‘easy’ topics?
- If and when there was misunderstanding, were you able to manage it and come to an eventual understanding? Were you determined to convince the other of your opinion or were you willing to let them keep their own opinion? In the latter case, was it because this is the ‘easier’ solution or because you believe people can have ideas different from yours?
Critical cultural awareness/political education: an ability to evaluate critically and on the basis of explicit criteria perspectives, practices and products in one's own and other cultures and countries.
- If and how did the research you did and the exchange influence your ability to evaluate critically both the target culture as well as your own culture? More specifically, did these experiences alter the way you think about politics or people’s political opinions?
In short someone with some degree of intercultural competence is someone who is able to see relationships between different cultures - both internal and external to a society - and is able to mediate, that is interpret each in terms of the other, either for themselves or for other people. It is also someone who has a critical or analytical understanding of (parts of) their own and other cultures - someone who is conscious of their own perspective, of the way in which their thinking is culturally determined, rather than believing that their understanding and perspective is natural.
Questionnaires
Instructions
The following three questionnaires are aimed at guiding you through the process of reflecting on your ICC and language learning. Since improving your ICC involves changes in attitudes and beliefs, this is not something I believe a teacher or any other person for that matter can assess about you. You are the only person who knows if and what has changed. As far as language learning is concerned, I can (and will) assess you, but your own self-assessment is a fundamental part of the process (as I think you all learned at the end of the first semester). Please follow the instructions below.
1. Create your own wiki page by clicking on your name. On the page it takes you to, click to the 'create a page' button on the bottom in the middle.
2. Copy the three questionnaires from this page and paste them in your page.
3. Carefully read and reflect on the questions. Then provide answers/examples.
N.B. If you do not want others to see your page, when you are in the edit function, on the bottom right-hand corner there is teh 'Hide page' option. Tick that and your page will be hidden.
My Experience of the Exchange[2]
Description of my feelings, knowledge and actions during the Exchange.
A. Feelings
- Ways in which my curiosity and interest were aroused: (examples that made me re-consider my own culture)
- Moments in which I felt uncomfortable: (what made me feel like this, with particular examples if possible)
- Moments when I felt comfortable:(what made me feel like this, with particular examples if possible)
B. Knowledge
- The most important things I learnt about family life and/or life at school.
- The most important things I have learnt about the country, the nation, the state of the target language.
- What I have learnt about customs and conventions of talking with people (topics which interest them, topics to avoid, how to greet people and take leave from them).
C. Actions
- Incidents or problems which I resolved by explaining different cultures to people, helping them see the points of view of different cultures and how misunderstandings can happen.
- Examples of times when I have had to ask questions and work out my own answers (from ask for clarification to understanding cultural customs and beliefs)
A self-assessment of my Intercultural Experience[3]
A. Interest in other people's way of life
- I am interested in other people's experience of daily life, particularly those things not usually presented to outsiders through the media. Example:
- I am also interested in the daily experience of a variety of social groups within a society and not only the dominant culture. Example:
B. Ability to change perspective
- I have realised that I can understand other cultures by seeing things from a different point of view and by looking at my culture from their perspective. Example:
C. Ability to cope with communicating in a different language with a different culture
- I am able to cope with a range of reactions people from different cultures may have to the way I express myself and what I say. Example:
D. Knowledge about another country and culture
- I know some important facts about the other culture and about the country, state and people that I did not know before. Example:
- I know how to engage in conversation with people of the other culture and maintain a conversation. Example:
E. Knowledge about intercultural communication
- I know how to resolve misunderstandings which arise from people's lack of awareness of the view point of another culture. Example of misunderstanding and solution:
- I know how to discover new information and new aspects of the other culture for myself. Example:
Self-Assessment of my Language Learning
Please provide specific examples of the following:
- words, expressions I learned in English:
- improvements in my pronunciation of certain words or intonation:
- improvements in my listening:
- changes in the way I speak Italian to non-native speakers:
- words, expressions I learned doing the wiki project:
- improvements in my reading doing the wiki project:
- improvements in my writing doing the wiki project:
Student ICC_Assessment pages
Federico Fiorentin_ICC_Assessment
Alessia Ferrara_ICC_Assessment
Valentina Mioni_ICC_Assessment
Laura Zoccarato_ICC_Assessment
Giovanna Foschini_ICC_Assessment
Giovanna Sperotto_ICC_Assessment
Martina Torresan_ICC_Assessment
Alessandra Squaquara_ICC_Assessment
Alessia Leonardi_ICC_Assessment
Raffaella Panizzon_ICC_Assessment
Silvia Nicolini_ICC_Assessment
Letizia Malacarne_ICC_Assessment
Veronica Bozzato_ICC_Assessment
Chiara Ramazzotti_ICC_Assessment
Selena Bortoletti_ICC_Assessment
Caterina Luison_ICC_Assessment
Claudia Turolla_ICC_Assessment
Stefania Pasquali_ICC_Assessment
Footnotes
- Adapted from: Byram, M. (2000). Assesing Intercultural Competence in Language Teaching. Sprogforum. Vol. 6 (18), pp. 8 to 13. Retrieved September 10, 2008 from http://inet.dpb.dpu.dk/infodok/sprogforum/Espr18/byram.html A record of my Intercultural Experience ▲
- Adapted from: Byram, M. (2000). Assesing Intercultural Competence in Language Teaching. Sprogforum. Vol. 6 (18), pp. 8 to 13. Retrieved September 10, 2008 from http://inet.dpb.dpu.dk/infodok/sprogforum/Espr18/byram.html A record of my Intercultural Experience ▲
- Adapted from: Byram, M. (2000). Assesing Intercultural Competence in Language Teaching. Sprogforum. Vol. 6 (18), pp. 8 to 13. Retrieved September 10, 2008 from http://inet.dpb.dpu.dk/infodok/sprogforum/Espr18/byram.html A record of my Intercultural Experience ▲
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