How different are we?

by Helen Fitzgerald

"This study raises and answers a number of questions of interest not only to linguists but also to many educators, sociologists and business people. What values are most salient in these mixed cultural groups? Which values appear to be most enduring and which cause clashes between groups? To what extent do participants retain the communication style identified with their first language when speaking English and how do these different styles impact on the communication? What are the causes of success and failure in the interactions? What problems arose in this relatively favourable situational context? Finally, how can training develop both intercultural and lingua-cultural (in this case English) communication competencies? To answer this last question, interactions which took place before, during and after training are compared in order to demonstrate how some of these competencies can be developed and an outline of the methods and materials used in this training is provided."--Jacket.