What was different?

by

Stephen M. Ryan


1. Objectives and Overview

Activity Overview:

Students list experiences of difference and the teacher helps them to classify them. The categories that emerge from the classification of differences in human experience are used later in building models of culture.

General Learning Objectives:

  • to build categories of difference in human experience that are often encountered in discussions of culture

Specific Learning Objectives (optional):

  • to elicit the understanding of categories by assigning names to them
  • to validate students' personal experience of difference

Keywords:

cultural differences, models of culture, intercultural awareness

2. Activity Context

Activity context description

This is the very first activity in a 4-semester course about exploring cultural similarities and difference. The students think they are going to learn how foreign countries are different from Japan but the teacher's intention is to help them build concepts and understandings that will be useful in the encounters of their daily lives, especially their eventual marriage to someone with different values, expectations, customs, etc. The course begins and ends with the students' lived experiences but takes a long detour through models of intercultural similarity and difference, based mainly on models that the students build with guidance from the teacher.

Students

Suggested range of students:
1
2
3
4
5
8
10
15
Do students need to use a second language?
No (skip to Step 4)
What is the second language?
Level(s) in target language:
Not applicable
  • These levels are approximations 
Comments

3: Activity Duration

Estimated duration (multiple ranges possible):
1 - 1.5 hours
How many sessions?
1
Any homework?
No

4. Download PDF

PDF document Ryan, S. - Categorizing Differences (ICLE AI #11).pdf



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