Using cultural informants from your own personal network.
Absolutely interactive highlights the Crossing Borders forum which aims to foster intercultural dialogue.
In Absolutely Personal we talk to Greg Houfe who had two French internships almost twenty years ago as part of his degree in European Business Administration.
Looking back did he think working at Moët et Chandon benefited him? Would he now employ a former intern preferentially over someone who had not had this type of experience?
In Absolutely Linguistic I talked with Gwen and Mia, 12 and 9, who are bilingual in Danish and English. Does this affect their identity? Do they mix the languages up?
And finally in Absolutely Confidential I talked to Tony Fox who was caught out in a conference in Germany recently.
The Host of this show is: Anne Fox
This is the Greenlandic way of referring to the ptarmigan bird. So how realistic is it that someone working in Greenland will learn Greenlandic? Jens Nyeland worked for three years as a scientific advisor regarding the sustainable use of seabirds and talks about the difficulties of the Greenlandic language.
You couldn’t go anywhere.
Regitze Nyeland describing the effect of the Greenlandic winters which she otherwise
found very easy to live with. How did she fare with the Greenlandic language in her
job dealing with youth problems in Greenland’s capital, Nuuk?
Picture credit: The Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis) in Greenland by Jens Nyeland
The Host of this show is: Anne Fox
An intercultural university on a boat, how to deal with re-entry shocks and a great metaphor for culture.
!!! If you had any problems downloading this episode with iTunes or another podcatcher, please try again now. I made a mistake by including the wrong file in the feed, but I’ve fixed the problem. I apologize for the inconvenience and hope, you’ll enjoy the show !!!
Welcome to episode 13, which comes to you in parts from the NAFSA conference in Canada.
Curious things are happening around us and our show and we seem to become rather famous – or should we say infamous?
We had a rather serious research article of no less than 11 pages written about our first show by Fred Dervin from the Department of French Studies at the University of Turku in Finland.
Paul Braddock has developed a lesson plan, also for our first show. This is absolutely amazing! He has taken our show, transcribed it and developed several exercises, including listening comprehension and some games. Paul, thank you so much! We are really honored.
And another amazing thing has happened. Two good friends of us have produced a show for us. Thomas Berger and Theo Schenk both work for the intstitute inter.research in Fulda, and Thomas recently went to the NAFSA conference in Canada, where he recorded several absolutely fantastic interviews with:
Dr. Josef Orlander, captain of the The Scholar Ship, which is an intercultural university aboard a cruiseliner
Alice Wu, an intercultural consultant and teacher at Cornell University, about re-entry shocks, and how to avoid them.
And Charles Hodgson from Podictionary explains how the word “ciao” came into the English language.
We are also trying to answer one of our regular questions: What is culture? So let’s listen to the ideas of Rhiannon and Victor, two students from Canada and the USA who took part in the Hessen Global Summer Internship Program organized by the institute inter.research e.V. and the Universites of Hessen/Germany.
You see, the show is packed with interesting reports, and we really hope you will enjoy listening to it.
And speaking about conferences…Laurent, Thomas and other project partners from Sweden and Spain will be at the EAIE conference in Basel, Switzerland from 12th until 15th of September. So if you happen to be there, then why don’t you join our roundtable session in intercultural preparation of internships abroad at the EAIE on the 15th of September.
Our ninth show is coming to you from London, so let’s have a look at our absolutely intercultural stations today.
In our last show we’ve talked about “culture as the software of the mind”, and we continue our discussion about viruses in our column ‘absolutely theoretical’.
Right after that Thomas tells us for our column ‘absolutely personal’ about an important update he and about 60 millions Britains didn’t get…the introduction of the Euro.
For our column ‘absolutely educational’ Laurent went to International House to meet Jack Lonergan. He follows up our question whether culture can be taught or not, and he gives some examples of how small adjustments can make a huge difference if we pay attention to the cultural needs of minorities.
We end the show with a completely new column: ‘absolutely incredible…but true’.
And to save the best for last, Laurent is going to sing for us! So please stay tuned and do not switch off before Laurent starts. =)
This episode comes from Portugal where we begin with a colourful street parade which includes a mass wedding.
We visit ELO SOCIAL, a place where disabled adults can work, rest and play and talk to Luisa, one of the staff..
The German station has noticed the many German flags flying on the occasion of the World Cup and ask themselves about the significance of national flags in different cultures.
Flags were also prominent in Portugal and we hear from Cristina Costa, a teacher of English at the Naval Academy of Lisbon about how she feels seeing all these flags.
My visit to Portugal was to work on the idea of how mentoring could help disabled people into the workplace. I talked to Nikolaos Floratos about the attitude of Greek employers to this idea as we walked around the palace at Sintra.
Next I talked to Vladimir Plesnik of Reintegra in the Czech Republic who had a good reason to welcome the idea of mentoring in his country.
The music was provided by Panteras Negras, the ELO SOCIAL rock band.
Welcome to the 7th episode of ‘absolutely intercultural!’.
After a round of feedback we continue our discussoin about “Culture as the software of the mind” in our column ‘absolutely theoretical!’. We talk about how we integrate updates into our daily lifes and will continue the next time with another aspect.
OK, and we couldn’t help noticing that there is something going on in Germany right now – The FIFA World Cup 2006, so the rest of this show is devoted to the game of all games!
For our column ‘absolutely personal!’ Anne interviewed John Brodie, a member of the tartan army, about a trip to Belarus he made last year and why he is cheering for the Togolese team right now in Germany.
Right after that we have a report of an eyewitness of the match Sweden vs. Trinidad & Tobago. Marie Nilsson from Sweden will let us sneak a peek into the stadium.
And for the last part of the show, which we might call ‘absolutely prepared!’, Laurent has interviewed Dr. Beate Blüggel, who works for the “Deutsche Volkshochschulverband” and who has organized the welcoming of millions of fans from all over the world in German trainstations.
We hope you enjoy the show. Please let us know what you think about it by leaving a comment here on the blog or by writing us an email. You are of course always welcome to send us an audiocomment and make suggestions on what we should talk about in our shows.
The show opens with a song but what is the language?
Translating the idea of software of the mind into practice, why not listen to today’s guest talking about the time she lived in a different country and note the tone of her voice when she talks about something which was obviously incompatible with her cultural programming. You may learn more about Icelanders than you do about Scotland which is where Icelander Gunnhildur Oskarsdottir spent three years.
After a little round of feedback the German station continues its discussion about the metaphor of culture as the software of the mind, and this time they focus on updates.
We finish with the Polar Bear podcast where you will always find out something new about Sweden in every episode. This extract comes from a special joint episode in March where Andy, the Polar Bear podcast host teamed up with Bruce of the Canadian Zedcast podcast and in which they compared notes about misconceptions about their respective countries.
In one of our first shows we asked the question: Can culture be taught? And apparently that struck a chord with many of you. We’ve been asked to follow that question up, and that is what we are going to do today.
We have two stimulating interviews with Elen Rana and Audrey Fernandez-Diehl, who give courses and seminars in intercultural communication. They will tell us their opinions and share some intercultural activities with us, which can be used to raise cultural awareness.
Right after that we talk about Geert Hofstede’s concept “Culture as the software of the mind”. It is amazing how many parallels there are between two seemingly so different things. We’ll have some more insights on that in our next shows, and we invite you to join the discussion by leaving a comment on our blog or sending us an email or an audiocomment.
We also have a new jingle, and we’d like to know how you like it. Would you like to hear your voice in it? Well, then please let us know.
By the way, this show is with 28 minutes a bit longer then the ones before, but it really is worth taking the time to listen to it.
This week the Chinese president travelled West to the United States to meet George Bush. Our virtual journey will take us in the opposite direction. We will take a closer look at one of the most fascinating and diverse but also controversial, countries in the world…China!
We have interviewed Professor Stefan Kammhuber, who has both, a scientific interest in the country, but he also fell in love with its people and its beauty.
And we’ll hear why Ching, a Chinese girl who studies in Europe, was very impressed by a little Belgian statue.
After that we’ll be ‘absolutely indiscrete’ again. This time we talk about the cultural implications of Google’s new Chinese name…and why what was called the “old hound” now likes to be addressed as the “harvest song”.
In the end we have a little Chinese lesson for you. Jenny and Ken from the ChinesePod-Podcast talk about politeness in China.
Thanks to all of you for your numerous comments after the first show – we were overwhelmed by your response! In our second show we ask ourselves: Can intercultural awareness be taught in a classroom? Can it be taught in online courses?
We start by giving you some quotations from the 17 comments of feed-back on the first show. Fernando, a Spanish student who is doing his internship in Germany explains how surprised he was to hear Germans discuss different olive oils as if they were wines. Alexandra gives examples of how you can teach intercultural communication by facilitating intercultural experiences between participants of different countries. Ana shares her experience of an intercultural business simulation between her university and universities in Sweden and Lithuania.
And then we ask you, the listeners: Have you got any experience with intercultural classes? Perhaps even online? How can we gain intercultural awareness? In our gossip column Tommy from Denmark tells us how the Mohamed-cartoons crossed his holiday plans in Egypt and in our look at our favourite podcasts with cultural contents we hear about solar radio for coffee traders in Ruanda.
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