Eyes Wide Open (Cross Cultural Engagement activity)

This activity is used in a Cross Cultural Engagement course soon after students have arrived at their education abroad location. Students are asked to write up their reflections in order to focus their observations. In this case students are asked to submit their writing to an instructor at the home campus, but this activity could easily be submitted to an instructor or director who is on-site with students.

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Instructions to students:Describe your initial response to your new environment.  You will need to be very descriptive and precise with your language in order to help the reader understand what you are experiencing.  Put the reader in your shoes. Also, be sure to include some of the following topics:

• What initially struck you most about your new environment?

• Describe an interaction you have had with a host country national and how the experience was for you and how it made you feel.
• How does it feel to hear a new language or new dialect of English being spoken around you all of the time?
• Have you experienced a language mix-up?
• What are you curious about and what will you do to do to learn more about it?
• What are your goals for your study abroad experience?
• What is exciting?
• What has been the biggest adjustment so far?
• Has anything made you uncomfortable or intimidated you? If so, what?
• Is there anything that you just don’t understand?
• What, if anything, has been a challenge or difficult?

Write about 2 pages, upload in Sakai, and also upload this into your Forum section in Sakai and post your half-page response to another student paper in the Forum. 
Be sure to keep a copy of your write-up, as you will use it for a later assignment!!

Faculty

• Andrew SmithAffiliation: Wake Forest University
  
• Steven DukeAffiliation: University of Nebraska