Business Across Cultures

This course explores issues in cross-cultural communication in the business context. It employs a great range of communicative activities to encourage students/learners to think critically, solve problems, and develop their oral communication skills. The activities are supplied with cultural information from many countries so that students can compare their own ideas and traditions to those people from other countries. This makes the course interesting and fit for use in both the multicultural and monocultural classrooms.

Goal: This course has a twofold goal: to broaden student's basic business knowledge and to draw on the students' own experiences and cultural perspectives.

Target audience: It is designed for intermediate level ESL (English as a second language) students who are in the business field or are studying business, or who are simply interested in cross-cultural conflict and resolution. Because of the nature of the content and the student-centered style of the activities, the course can be used from a lower-intermediate through advanced level. No previous knowledge of business is required.

Communicative activities:

Warm-up: The questions that follow a cartoon prompt students to share their knowledge or experience related to the topic.

Case Study: The cases provide the students with realistic contexts in which cross-cultural misunderstandings occur while also presenting useful business concepts.

Problem Solving: Students read different pieces of cultural information that help them better understand one point of view on the conflict presented in the case. The readings are scattered in Appendix . Students then pair up with someone who has read other information. Together they try to construct a whole view of the misunderstanding in the case.

Registration: The course covers 15 weeks. It requires to get a credit.

Register during the first week of the semester (i.e. September 1-10, 2004)