Bridging the Cross-Cultural Gap
Listening and Speaking Tasks for Developing Fluency in English

Russell Arent

About the Book

Bridging the Cross-Culture Gap was written to improve global listening skills and overall fluency in spoken English while helping students to see the pragmatic elements of what they hear and say. The book's multitude of tasks are designed to increase cultural awareness as well as develop the language skills. This book assumes that learners have already had explicit instruction in the mechanics of listening and speaking in English.

Each task is identified as having been designed for individual, pair work, small group, large group, or speech. However, tasks are easily adapted or modified based on class dynamics, class size, or session length. A large percentage of the tasks involve film clips representing a diverse group of countries and cultures. Two short lectures are available on the website (see Look Inside) and may be downloaded for free.

This book was written to help focus discussions in the classroom on some of the more interesting and exciting topics for students from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. The tasks were designed to encourage students to take steps toward a deeper and more fulfilling understanding of what it means to be part of an intercultural world.