XYHX009 Intercultural Professional Competencies (2–3 cr)
Description
Content
The course introduces students to fundamental issues and concepts in intercultural and multilingual communication from an interdisciplinary perspective focusing on global work life and skills needed in multicultural work environments. The course offers a theoretical and practical framework for enhancing students’ knowledge of and competence in intercultural communication.
The course deals with issues of how to deal with stereotypes and how to analyze different cultural contexts and the aim is to provide tools for reflection and adapting to new cultural environments for those taking part in student exchange abroad in order to get the most out of the experience. In essence, the aim of the course is to encourage students to gain basic knowledge about intercultural communication and languages, to enhance students’ intercultural communication skills and to build students’ confidence for participation in intercultural contexts.
Completion methods
Videolectures, groupwork and report on group discussions, individual written assignment. This blended learning course can mainly be taken as distance learning.
Assessment details
Active participation and successful completion of all assignments. More detailed assessment criteria will be introduced at the beginning of the course.
Learning outcomes
- understand fundamental issues in intercultural communication such as ethnocentrism, identification, stereotyping, and adaptation to a new / changed environments
- understand that different languages encode different world views and that communication itself is relative and context related (e.g. business context vs. informal social encounters)
- acknowledge and be willing to engage in different ways of seeing and in realities different from one’s own
- understand that culture does not determine but rather may inform our communication in different ways
- be motivated to enhance ones’ intercultural competence by initiating and maintaining intercultural interpersonal relationships and diverse social networks.