Upon completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Comprehensive Skills
- Demonstrate effective intercultural communication sensitivity by analyzing current behavior and constructing communication competencies through analysis and self-awareness.
- Communicate ideas with fluency and rhetorical sensitivity.
- Apply nonverbal communication theory in communicating and evaluating messages across cultures.
- Provide an intellectual framework that allows description and understanding of communication among culturally heterogeneous individuals.
- Exhibit understanding of intercultural communication competence by the use of critical thinking to analyze and resolve intercultural conflicts, demonstrate respect for cultural and social diversity.
- Demonstrate awareness of historical, cultural and social traditions which influence communication events.
- Communication
- Use written, verbal and nonverbal communication to express thoughts, philosophies, and strategies for effective intercultural communication.
- Explore the listening process and share skills to more effectively listen to intercultural messages.
- Send and interpret verbal and nonverbal messages across cultural contexts with accuracy.
- Critical Thinking
- Develop the skills necessary to read, evaluate, and use intercultural communication theories and principles in everyday practice.
- Analyze the relationship between communication and culture.
- Formulate a plan for improved intercultural communication competency.
- Construct a plan to use critical thinking to understand and resolve intercultural conflicts.
- Foundations of Intercultural Communication: Defining Culture and Communication
- Define communication and communication models.
- Define culture and explore differences between nationality and ethnicity.
- Identify difference between nationality and ethnicity.
- Explain the meanings and connotations of the terms culture, subcultures, co-cultures, subgroups, and microcultures.
- Explore the meanings and connotations of the terms culture, subculture, co-culture, subgroup, counterculture, and microculture.
- Define ethnocentrism.
- Barriers to Intercultural Communication
- List barriers to effective and appropriate intercultural communication.
- Give an example of ethnocentrism that demonstrates it as a barrier to intercultural communication.
- Distinguish among stereotypes, prejudice, and racism and explain how each is a barrier to intercultural communication.
- Explain how assuming similarity instead of difference acts as a barrier in intercultural communication.
- Intercultural Communication Competence
- Identify and describe different global and local manifestations of culture, and discern cultural complexities.
- Describe examples of how to engage with diverse groups of people while recognizing cultural and individual differences in interaction and communication.
- Immigration and Acculturation
- Describe ways that immigration affects nations.
- Define culture shock.
- Describe how changing demographics and the changing worldwide immigration patterns affect intercultural communication.
- Identify the predictors of an immigrant's success in adapting to a new country.
- Explain why some immigrant groups have maintained a separate identity.
- Explain co-cultural theory and how it relates to cultural identity.
- Identify and describe the intercultural communication challenges of immigrant groups who have maintained a separate identity.
- Co-cultures (Cultures Within Cultures) and Contact Among Cultures
- List reasons why indigenous languages and cultures should be protected.
- Contrast periods of U.S. immigration assimilation and immigration integration.
- Trace the patterns of non-English languages use in the United States.
- Characterize intercultural communication in the age of colonialism.
- Explain the concept of cultural imperialism.
- Develop a model of the spread of innovations from one culture to others.
- Give examples of cultural icons.
- Describe what characterizes the marketing of cultural icons.
- Describe critical factors for today's international marketing communication.
- Discuss how the exposure to and use of the internet and social media have impacted intercultural communication.