This paper requires the student to reflect on an intercultural encounter that has occurred in their own lives, to analyze it, and to derive lessons from it. Objectives: After completing this exercise,

This paper requires the student to reflect on an intercultural encounter that has occurred in their own lives, to analyze it, and to derive lessons from it.

Objectives:

After completing this exercise, the student will:

1. Show a more nuanced grasp of how cultural differences can shape an interpersonal experience.
2. Draw lessons form an intercultural experience and support their arguments with evidence from the experience.
3. Reflect critically on their own responses and attitudes to other perspectives and actions
4. Begin developing an improved capacity to recognize and modify their habitual enactment of their own cultural practices in order to more fully recognize and participate in the experiences of those from other cultures.

Process

Your paper should progress through the following stages:

1. Download the Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters (this can also be found on-line at http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/autobiogrweb_EN.asp (Links to an external site.)).
2. Fill out the Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters. Be as thorough and detailed as possible. There is no space limit. This is your data.
3. Go through your data and generate a thesis about what happened and why
4. Write a 5-8 page paper describing the encounter and articulating the lesson(s) you learned from it. Defend your argument—your claim that the encounter teaches this particular lesson—with attention to details. Make every effort to understand how the other person(s) in the encounter felt, and why you think so. Make use of concepts from the course lectures and readings where useful in helping you articulate your argument.

5. Upload your Intercultural Encounter Essay draft.

IMPORTANT NOTE: A draft is not an unfinished paper. It is the best paper you can write by the deadline without assistance. This should be a complete paper you would be willing to turn in for a grade. Unfinished papers will receive 0 points.