INTERCULTURAL COMPETENCE - GROUP A

We will analyze the short story English as a Second Language, by Lucy Honig, taking an intercultural approach.

Let's get started!

ESL and

Intercultural Competence

Poll

How much do you know about intercultural competence?

• 1. 1. I have never heard of it.

• 2. 2. I think I know what it means.

• 4. 3. I know some things related to it.

• 4. 4. I know a lot!

• 5. 5. I'm an expert!

​Human beings do not choose our first language; we simply learn the structures and words we hear all around us. Although bilingual and trilingual individuals do exist (...), most people speak a single language (...). By the same token, we don’t choose the food our family eats, or whether or not we live in a city. Nor do we choose the country we live in, or the continent we live on. (Grimson,A.)

Multiple Select

Choose the categories you think are part of the concept of culture.

You can choose more than one option.

• FOOD

• ROUTINES

• CELEBRATIONS

• LANGUAGE

• PRACTICES

Multiple Choice

Which of the following extracts best illustrates an aspect of the concept of culture?

• Where would she put a new kitchen in her cramped apartment anyway? No hookups for a washer, no space for a two-door refrigerator.

• The big mouth game show host was kissing and hugging a woman playing on the left-hand team. Her husband and children were right there with her, and still he encircled her with his arms.

• Now the team on the right were hugging each other, squealing, jumping up and down. They had just won a whole new kitchen - refrigerator, dishwasher, clothes washer, microwave, everything!

​Cultural identity, in this second sense, is a matter of 'becoming' as well as of 'being'. It belongs to the future as much as to the past (...) Cultural identities come from somewhere, have histories. But, like everything which is historical, they undergo constant transformation (...) they are subject to the continuous 'play' of history, culture and power. (Stuart Hall)

​CULTURAL IDENTITY

Multiple Select

Choose the items you think that best define the concept of cultural identity.

You can choose more than one option.

• CULTURE

• POLITICAL FIGURES

• HOME

• CONSTRUCTION

• EMPLOYMENT

Multiple Choice

Which of the following extracts best illustrates an aspect of the concept of cultural identity?

• She didn’t know if it was a good omen or a bad one, the two Indian women on the subway. They could have been sitting on the dusty ground at the market in San ___, selling corn or clay pots, with the bright-coloured striped shawls and full skirts, (...). They were exactly as they must have been back home, but she was seeing them here…

• She panicked when they got to the big school by the river. “Like the United Nations,” she said, seeing so much glass and brick, an endless esplanade of concrete.

• “Maria Perez grew up in the countryside of Guatemala, the oldest daughter in a family of 19 children,” read the Mayor as Maria stood quaking by his side. She noticed he made a slight wheezing noise when he breathed between words. 

​MIGRATION

​Migrancy on the contrary, involves a movement in which neither the points of departure nor those of arrival are immutable or certain (...) Always in transit, the promise of a homecoming(...)becomes an impossibility. History gives way to histories (...) (Chambers)

Multiple Select

Which of the following terms do you consider to be part of the concept of migration?

You can choose more than one option.

• ROOTED IN ONE PLACE

• TRAVEL

• HOME

• PERMANENCE

• BORDER

Multiple Choice

Which of the following extracts best illustrates part of the concept of migration?

• “It says here 19 children. What was it like growing up in a house with 19 children? How many bathrooms did you have?

• Carmen’s eyes met Maria’s; Carmen waved. Maria beamed out at her. For a moment she felt like she belonged there, in this crowd.

• “But big house, money, rich like that, bad in China,” said Fu Wu. “Those year, Government bad to you. how they let him?” “In my country,” said Carlos, “government bad to you if you got small house, no money.”