North Seattle Community College
Embracing a Complex Future: Winter 2011
Cultural Interview and Active Listening Assignment
Due: January 17, 2011
Assignment: Ask someone in the class who has a different cultural background than you to be your interview partner. (For this assignment, we are defining culture as racial, place of origin, or ethnic.) Before meeting your cultural interview partner, spend some time thinking about questions you’d like to ask him/her. Ask important questions – questions about love, birth, family, passion, cultural stories, vocation, etc. You might also do some initial research before meeting about their culture if you are unfamiliar with their culture them so you are more prepared.
Spend at least 45 minutes with them asking questions about their culture and listening to their story as it unfolds. Frame your questions within the context of being a witness. Use the Dynamic Listening skills listed below and LaRay Barna’s article “Stumbling Blocks to Intercultural Communication” to help you be a more culturally aware and mindful listener. If at all possible, audiotape your interview so that you don’t have to rely solely on your notes to develop your paper but this is not required.
To capture the moment, take a picture of the two of you that you can post onto our blogsite when your synthesis is due. Immediately following the interview, recapture your listening and learning experience while your memory is still fresh. These reflective notes will be important when you write your paper.
Now you’re ready to write your paper. Divide your paper into three section headings:
A. Overview:
Your overview is an introduction to your paper. It establishes the context for your reader. It tells your reader what this experience was like for you and for the other person. How easy or difficult was it to practice the listening skills listed below? What “stumbling block” (Barna) was present for you? Where did you meet? What time did the interview start? End? Where did you meet? Was the space conducive to listening? Did you feel comfortable or awkward? How do you think the other person felt?
B. Analysis about Culture Listening:
Write an analysis about what you learned about yourself as a multicultural listener from your conversation with this person. Make this section a coherent analysis and not a listing or mechanical record of the answers to your questions. Remember that you don’t have to cover all of the questions and your interview may have gone in a direction that wasn’t represented by the questions you prepared. Besides learning about another person’s culture, what did you learn about the challenges of being an effective listener? Be as specific in this section of your paper citing examples of when you used the various listening skills or when Barna’s “stumbling blocks” were helpful to you.
C. Reflection:
What did you learn from this interview about being a multicultural listener? What aspect of your listening experience will stay with you as an important aspect of communication across cultures? What most surprised you as you communicated this way with your cultural partner? Did this experience give you a better understanding of the person’s culture? Were there questions, in hindsight, that you wished you had asked? How might this interview experience influence your learning in the future as a multicultural communicator?
Format: typed, double spaced, 12 point font (preferably Times Roman), maximum three pages that includes the headings for each of the three sections above.
Due Dates:
Monday, January 17 – post a synthesis of your interview (who did you interview, what did you learn, what surprised you, what would you change?) and post pictures on our blog site
Wednesday, January 19 – turn in your complete paper
Dynamic (Active) Listening and the Cultivation of Empathy (seeking to understand)
1. Presencing– Intentionality (I choose to be here); breathing (centered in the present moment).
Listening Tip: Empty your mind of thoughts, ideas, plans, and concerns so that you are open to the other person.
2. Receiving – Opening heart and mind to hear/receive the “whole” message.
Listening Tip: Concentrate on the person with whom you are interacting. Say to yourself, "I want to focus on this person and what he or she is feeling and thinking."
3. Clarifying – Asking strategic questions to open up greater understanding.
Listening Tip: If you find yourself framing responses to the other person, try to push those aside; they interfere with your concentration on what the other person is saying. If your mind wanders, don't criticize yourself; that's distracting. Instead, gently refocus on the person you are with and what that person is communicating to you. It's natural for other thoughts to intrude, so just push them away and stay focused on the other person.
4. Summarizing/Paraphrasing – Restating to seek clarification of understanding.
Listening Tip: Let the other person know you are attending mindfully by giving nonverbal responses (nods, facial expressions); ask questions to encourage elaboration; keep eye contact (as appropriate).
5. Observing Nonverbals
Listening Tip: Listen for feelings; be aware of the “hidden” content in the message; listen to the sounds of the words (tone, rate, volume). Watch for hot/cold nonverbals.
- Resonating - moving beyond me to you; moving beyond you/me to we.
Listening Tip: In this part of communicating/listening experience, you find yourself in a heightened state of respect, understanding, even excitement as you seek to fully understand another person through the act of listening. - Checking – Did I fully understand what you shared with me? If not, ask for clarification.
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North Seattle Community College
First Intercultural Interview Assignment
Grading Rubric: Intercultural Knowledge and Competence (NSCC Essential Learning Outcome)
Assignment
Completion / Follows completely the assignment instructions creating a holistic, well crafted (with both evidence and reflection), and grammatically correct writing on the complex intersection of culture and communication from a personal perspective. / Provides the reader with a well crafted assignment that follows the assignment format and develops for the reader a clear sense of what the writer did and learned through this assignment about culture and communication / Somewhat follows the instructions of the assignment showing the reader a beginning understanding of difference, complexity, sensitivity and curiosity
/ The assignment demonstrates a rudimentary level of completion and complexity
Attitudes
Curiosity / Asks complex questions about other cultures, seeks out and articulates answers to these questions that reflect multiple cultural perspectives. / Asks deeper questions about other cultures and seeks out answers to these questions. / Asks simple or surface questions about other cultures. / States minimal interest in learning more about other cultures.
Attitudes
Openness / Suspends judgment in valuing her/ his interactions with culturally different others. / Begins to suspend judgment in valuing her/ his interactions with culturally different others. Aware of judgment. / Expresses openness but has difficulty suspending any judgment in her/ his interactions with culturally different others, and is aware of own judgment and expresses a willingness to change. / Has difficulty suspending any judgment in her/ his interactions with culturally different others, and is unaware of own judgment.
Knowledge
Cultural self- awareness / Articulates insights into own cultural rules and biases (e.g. seeking complexity; aware of how her/his experiences have shaped these rules, and how to recognize and respond to cultural biases, resulting in a shift in self-description.) / Recognizes new perspectives about own cultural rules and biases (e.g. not looking for sameness; comfortable with the complexities that new perspectives offer.) / Identifies own cultural rules and biases (e.g. with a strong preference for those rules shared with own cultural group and seeks the same in others.) / Shows minimal awareness of own cultural rules and biases (even those shared with own cultural group(s)) (e.g. uncomfortable with identifying possible cultural differences with others.)
Total Points: ___/16 14.4-16 (90-100/3.5-4.0 or A); 12.8-14.3 (80-89/3.4-2.5 or B); 11.2- 12.7 (70-79/2.4-1.5 or C)
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SAMPLE STUDENT PAPER
Cultural Interview #1
Overview
I met Lilia on Saturday, October 2nd at the Starbucks located in University Village. We sat outside at one of the nearby tables to discuss our backgrounds and the cultures that shaped and defined who we are. I was uncomfortable at first because we didn’t really know each other. We were strangers to each other, which caused a few moments of awkward silence as we tried to transition from one topic to the next. I feel that as the interview progressed, we got more comfortable talking about our histories with one another. By the end of the interview, the conversation was more fluid and we were chatting like two friends instead of two complete strangers. The weather was gorgeous, so it was a nice day to sit outside and learn about a culture that is both similar and different from my own.
Analysis about Cultural Listening
I think that I went into the interview expecting to have captured more differences than similarities between our cultures. I was surprised to hear how many times Lilia referenced a similarity between Russia and the United States. My own perception of Russia was that it was a cold place, both in terms of the type of weather and the type of people. Influenced by what I see on television, I find myself guilty of creating a “single story” of Russia. What I knew of Russia was what I saw in movies like Rocky IV and The Bourne Supremacy or in the television show 24. I thought of it as a place overrun with stories of repression and espionage, where assassins and conspiracy theorists run rampant throughout the country. This perception that I had of Russia clearly illustrates what Barna describes in her article, “Stumbling Blocks in Intercultural Communication.” She states, “Stereotypes persist because they are firmly established as myths or truisms by one’s won national culture and because they sometimes rationalize prejudices.” When Lilia described Russians as being “generally very hospitable,” it surprised me and challenged my own perceptions of how I viewed the people and culture of Russia.
Throughout the interview, Lilia gave numerous examples of similarities I would find in Russia as compared to the United States. Her family enjoys spending time together watching television, engaging in conversation, celebrating holidays, cooking and playing outside in the snow. She also gave me examples of differences, but none that I would have expected to hear. Attending the same school for 11 years, playing in the snow until 2am and not eating fast food are certainly not the differences I expected to hear going into the interview. Where was my story about assassination plots and world domination? Where were the sensational stories about the high-speed police chases through the crowded streets of Moscow? I guess I will have to leave those stories to the Hollywood screenwriters.
Going into the interview, I was guilty of Stumbling Block #4. I had a certain perception in my mind of Russian culture. I had created a single story, and Lilia helped give me a broader perspective of what life was like for her growing up in a culture that, while slightly different, was also very similar in how we relate, connect and respond to one another as human beings. Lilia shared her story with me and gave me a new perspective on the country and people of Russia.
Reflection
This exercise was beneficial for me in that I learned not to rely on preconceived notions about what I think a culture might be like. I went into the interview expecting to hear certain things and was surprised with what I discovered. When I have to do this exercise again, I would like to focus more on the skill of “receiving.” I want to focus more on listening with an open heart and mind to hear/receive the whole message. I would also like to focus more on observing nonverbals. Although I tried to keep an eye out for these during the interview, I would like to get better at paying attention to the nonverbals that I give and receive as a communicator. Additionally, as the interviewee I learned that I need to slow down and be patient. In reflecting on how I responded when I was the person being interviewed, I find myself guilty of talking to fast and assuming that the other person knew what I was talking about. This directly tied to what Barna describes in her article, “In the United States nodding, smiling and affirmative comments will probably be confidently interpreted by straightforward, friendly Americans as meaning that they have informed, helped and pleased the newcomer. It is likely, however, that the foreigner actually understood very little of the verbal and nonverbal content and was merely indicating polite interest or trying not to embarrass himself or herself or the host by trying to verbalize questions.” I left the interview wondering how much of what I tried to explain about my own culture growing up in New Orleans was understood by my interviewer. I think I could have done a better job of explaining my own culture versus assuming that she understood what I was talking about.
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