ESL Teacher Education and Intercultural Communication: Discomfort as a Learning Tool

Abstract

This article reports on a simulation used in a course in intercultural communication in an ESL/EFL teacher education program at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. The simulation was designed to create an unfamiliar and uncomfortable atmosphere, culturally, for the students, similar to what one would experience were he or she in a foreign environment. For three weeks of the semester the students were required to greet one another at the opening and closing of class in a particular manner, modeled after the greetings used in the Yoruba (West Africa) culture. The focus of the simulation was at the affective level, to help students recognize themselves as cultural beings whose cultural beliefs would influence the learning process of their own students. Also reported are excerpts from students' journals and students' evaluations of the simulation.