Thanks to everyone who came to my talk at the American Space at the U.S. Embassy in Madrid on February 26th. I spoke about intercultural communication and language teaching and shared some ideas for how to help students deal with other cultures in the classroom.  Remember, if you have any critical incidents or stories about communication problems caused by cultural misunderstandings between Spaniards and people from the U.S. or Canada I would love to hear them. Please send them to me via the contact page.  Thanks!

If you are interested in this topic, check out the books page. There’s a link to the Pearson website from which you can read the first chapter of my culture book for free.  You can download the slides from this talk on the Resources page.  Just scroll down to the section on Intercultural Communication.

Here’s a description of the talk:

Developing Intercultural Awareness in Language Teaching

Language teachers are often working to engage their students with grammar and vocabulary. But an added dimension of learning a language is understanding how different cultures view the world differently and the effect of culture on language. How can teachers become more aware of intercultural differences and help bring culture learning into the language classroom? In this engaging and interactive presentation, we will examine key concepts of intercultural communication and look at practical ways to help our students communicate more effectively when they interact with those from different cultural backgrounds.

You can get a copy of the flyer describing the talk here.