Students brainstorm all of the cultural stereotypes they can think of and list them on butcher paper around the room. Teacher selects several and students try to come up with reasons why/how those stereotypes came about. Discuss whether students believe stereotypes are true or not. Quickly students will realize that the less contact with a particular people/culture they have, the less information they will have to disprove stereotypes. However, the more exposure to and/or interaction with a particular people/culture the students have, the more information they will have access to in order to reinforce or to disprove the stereotypes.

This realization should lead to discussions about how stereotypes can be possibly damaging or helpful to potential relationships between people of different cultures. Students can then brainstorm different ways to foster greater education about different cultures in order to break common stereotypes and improve intercultural awareness.

This activity can be more specific and only focus on stereotypes about English speaking countries and cultures OR it can be about stereotypes students encounter in their everyday lives. How the instructor focuses the task will have to do with the specific goals he/she has in mind.

Based on the initial brainstorming of cultural stereotypes (in task I.), in pairs or small groups, students should select a specific stereotype they find interesting, e.g. American tourists in Germany. Depending on how the course is structured, students may be able to select the type of technology they would like to use to present their finding about their topic (iMovie, PowerPoint, Hyperstudio). OR students may be assigned a specific type of technology for their presentations (PowerPoint). This task would be a long-term research project ending in a presentation to the class about the group’s findings.

The students would be required to interview several of their native countrymen and ask them what they think about American tourists in Germany. Students would compile the information from the interviews and attempt to find other sources relating to the topic. Students would have to document where they found the information, when it was published, and by whom as well as compiling a bibliography. Again, depending on how the task is structured, it might be of interest to document whether the stereotype students are researching has changed over time, if it is a relatively new stereotype, or if it has been maintained as status quo for a long time.

Then students would be required to contact the people/culture of the stereotype they are researching and ask them what they think of that particular stereotype. Do they agree or not and why? Why do they think that the other people/culture thinks that? As this part of the task could be potentially very face threatening for both people/cultures involved, many tips, role playing, and practicing would take place in class prior to the interviews in order to eliminate as much unpleasantness as possible.

Based on the interviews they had conducted with both peoples/cultures, students would discuss whether there is some truth in the stereotype or not. Additionally, they would make suggestions for how the stereotype could be eliminated if possible and why or why not. The information would then be compiled, organized and presented as a PowerPoint presentation (or presented in whatever form of technology deemed appropriate by the instructor) to the entire class.

Students could select a culture they find intriguing, research an aspect of the culture (i.e., cooking, eating, weddings, greetings, apologizes, formality/informality, humor, introductions) and then present their findings to the group. They should prepare to lead a discussion about possible cultural misunderstandings that might arise due to differences in the class’s and the other culture’s practices and/or expectations.

The purpose of this task is to raise student awareness of the sometimes subtle expectations we have of one another despite the fact that we try to be open to different cultures.

The instructor could prepare a role-play with detailed instructions for participants to follow. The role-plays would highlight the differences between two cultures’ expectations, everyday interactions, perceptions, and/or attitudes.

The course instructor can carefully select readings about a specific topic (death penalty, abortion, human rights, youth prosecution, legal drinking/smoking age) from different cultural standpoints. Then the class would be divided into groups designated as the British, Americans, Australians, South Africans, etc., and those ‘groups’ must argue for their perspective on the issue. The idea is to more deeply inform students of different perspectives and illustrate that no one perfect solution exists.

Students should select a culture they find interesting and then think of an interesting way to introduce that culture to their classmates. The goal is to try to find and highlight some common ground between the strange/unfamiliar/unusual culture and the everyday life of one’s classmates.

Students would select a specific population (e.g. Americans studying in Germany) living in the students’ native country and interview them and/or use a questionnaire to find out what the ‘foreigners’ perception of the natives is. Additionally, the ‘foreigners’ could be asked what was most difficult for them living in this foreign country and why. Students would then present their findings to the class with some form of technology.

Students should try to find an international chat room relating to a stereotype or some related topic and start interacting with people from a country/culture they would like to know more about. They should keep a journal of issues that arise that strike them as different or unusual from something they would have experienced with someone from their own culture. Different experiences might include very different opinions about hot topics (the death penalty, abortion, human rights, vacation time), a less/more direct way of expressing oneself, or the type of information one divulges about oneself. Students present their findings to the class with some form of technology.