I have just finished teaching a summer ESL course entitled “Cross-Cultural Talk”—a speaking class that focuses on language fluency at a low-intermediate level of language proficiency. Because I always try to help my students to become more familiar with the campus environment and use resources available on it (as all of them will be “regular” university students soon after they finish their intensive English course), I designed my syllabus around cross-cultural topics that could be explored both on campus and beyond.

That is, for each unit of the course, I spent one day discussing the target topic in its relation to our local campus and one day discussing the same topic on a broader scale—in its relation to American society/culture. In both days, students were also expected to share experiences from their own cultures. Continue reading →