The document discusses the importance of cultural competence for teachers in increasingly diverse classrooms. It outlines key cultural differences, such as ways of communicating, learning, and dealing with conflict, that teachers should be aware of. The document provides suggestions for teachers to gradually develop cultural competence, including building relationships, seeking cultural resources, and learning about students' cultures.

1. “Communicating Cross-Culturally:
What Teachers Should Know”
The Internet TESL Journal
PRESENTATION BY: ABIGAIL ALFARO

2. Contents
 Introduction
 Cultural competence in the Classroom
 Gradual process in acquiring cultural
competence
 Suggestions to increasing competence
in cross-cultural communication

3. Introduction
 This article studies or looks at the need for
teachers to be culturally responsive and
competent as schools and classrooms
become increasingly linguistically and
culturally diverse.
 English language learners are the fastest
growing group of students in the United
States today (Spellings, 2005)
 Today, one out of nine students are learning
English as a second language.

4. Introduction
 But are classroom teachers adequately
prepared to teach and interact with this
culturally and linguistically diverse
population?
 It is imperative that teachers learn how to
effectively communicate cross-culturally in
such diverse contexts.

5. Introduction
 It is essential for teachers to understand the role
that culture plays within the multi-cultural school
setting.
 A learned set of shared interpretations about
beliefs values, and norms which affect the
behaviors of a relatively large group of people.
(Lustig and Koester, 2003)
 A medium that touches and alters all aspects of
human life.
 Culture is complex, multi-layered and faceted.

6. Introduction
 Culture is likened to an iceberg of which
only the top is visible while a massive part
remains and unobservable below the water’s
surface.
 But others likened it to an onion with its
layers that as one is peeled, another lies
beneath, waiting to be discovered.
 These metaphors address the complexity of
culture and in these complexities lies the
challenge that ELLs teachers face.

7. Cultural Competence in the Classroom
 Requires diving below the surface
 Involves acquiring a corpus of deeper cultural
information that might affect how a teacher
instructs and how a student learns.
 The metaphors of iceberg and onion speak to a
culture’s complex nature.
 Evokes an array of feelings
 Involves understanding of how cultures differ
under the surface and how cultures respond
differently to similar situations.

8. Gradual Process of Acquiring Cultural
Competence
 Begins with knowledge and understanding
of six basic cultural differences that teachers
are likely to encounter in the culturally
diverse classroom.
 Familiarity with these differences will begin
to aid teachers in understanding the
complexity of teaching diverse groups of
students.

9. Gradual Process of Acquiring Cultural
Competence
 Ways of Knowing
Information is gathered through
intensive research in libraries and on
the Internet (e.g. United States)
It is also gathered through “non-
academic” sources (e.g.
elders, nature, spirits or symbols)

10. Gradual Process of Acquiring Cultural
Competence
 Ways of solving problems
cultures have different ways of solving
problems.
Cultures reason differently and arrive
at solutions based on their distinctive
values, philosophy and beliefs.

11. Gradual Process of Acquiring Cultural
Competence
 Ways of communicating non-verbally
 Cultures have different ways of
communicating non-verbally and is very
crucial for teachers to be aware of these
differences.
 Any or all of the following might be
observed in the classroom (e.g. children
who do not make direct eye
contact, children who do not smile and
others who rarely smile)

12. Gradual Process of Acquiring Cultural
Competence
 When teachers begin to recognize that cultures
have different ways of communicating non-
verbally, they will understand their ELL
students and be less likely to be offended or to
misinterpret non-verbal clues to
emotional, cognitive or attitudinal states.

13. Gradual Process of Acquiring Cultural
Competence
 Ways of Learning
 Different cultures learn in different ways.
 In United States, students often work in
groups and do collaborative activities in
which they learn from one another.
 Classrooms can be student-centered and with
teacher as facilitator.

14. Gradual Process of Acquiring Cultural
Competence
 Ways of Learning
 In some cultures, the teacher is always the
center of class activities and the sole-
authority figure.
 Students don’t even dare ask questions, as to
do so would challenge the teacher’s authority.
 There are no collaborative activities in the
classrooms and students are required to
memorize pages and pages of information
that they subsequently restate on written
tests.

15. Gradual Process of Acquiring Cultural
Competence
 Ways of Dealing with Conflict
 Conflict is a fact of life
 Observing how people how deal with and
react to conflicts that see clear differences
between cultures
 Some cultures view conflict as positive thing
while some view it as something to be
avoided.

16. Gradual Process of Acquiring Cultural
Competence
 Ways of Dealing with Conflict
 Conflict is not usually desirable in U.S.
 In Asian countries, open conflict is
experienced as embarrassing or demeaning
 As a rule, these cultures hold that differences
are best worked out quietly.
 Written exchanges might be preferred over
face-to-face encounters as means of conflict
resolution (Dupraw and Axner, 1997)

17. Gradual Process of Acquiring Cultural
Competence
 Ways of Using Symbols
 In a multi-cultural school setting, symbols
that are unique to various cultures should be
correctly understood or
interpreted, otherwise, problems can arise.
 Case in New York: a math teacher asked her
students to embellish their math portfolios by
drawing pictures to accompany them.

18. Suggestion to Increasing Teacher’s Competence
in Cross-Cultural Communication
 Build relationships with students and their
parents
 Listen emphatically
 Look for cultural interpreters in school or in the
community who can serve as resources in
assisting teachers to add to their cultural funds
of knowledge.

19. Suggestions in Increasing Teacher’s Competence
in Cross-Cultural Communication
 Take advantage of available resources:
books, articles , films, music, audio
recordings, and a variety of material from the
Internet that might aid teachers in learning
more about their students’ cultures

20. Conclusion
 To become cross-culturally competent in the
classroom, teachers must understand
important ways in which cultures differ and
how this affects the ways in which their
students behave.
 Living in a global society, teachers are called
upon to instruct and work with students with
very different ethnicities and beliefs from those
to which they have been accustomed

21. Conclusion
 Therefore, it is vital that teachers continuously
educate themselves, discovering all that they
can about their students and their
backgrounds.
 In the process of developing their cultural
knowledge and cross-cultural communication
skills, the five cross-cultural points of
comparison and the techniques for expanding
cultural knowledge discussed above can
provide important guidelines for teachers.

22. Conclusion
 Ultimately, such an approach should help
teachers to understand and respect diverse
students and to guide these students more
effectively toward academic and personal
success and fulfillment.

23. Reflections:
 Teaching students from different cultures is not an
easy job for most people.
 It requires a lot of patience in dealing with them and
takes time to be familiar with the students’ culture.
 Teaching culturally diverse students requires deeper
observation of students

24. Reflections:
 Understanding this helps a teacher to be
competent in communicating cross-culturally
so as not to be shocked with his or her students’
way of communicating non-verbally. (e.g. no
direct eye contact, not smiling, etc.)

25. Source
 “Communicating Cross-Culturally: What
Teachers Should Know” by Pratt-
Johnson, Yvonne; Retrieved from The Internet
ESL Journal, Vol. XII, No. 2;
http://iteslj.org.Articles/Pratt-Johnson-
CrossCultural.html