the podcast about all things intercultural
Today’s show is about Green Erasmus. Have you ever wanted to adventure like Indiana Jones or simply wanted to travel without harming the environment? In today’s show we give two very real examples: Kalvin, an Australian exchange student living in Germany, who bicycled around Europe without pre-booked accommodation, and Jean, a German student who took the land route to India! For those who don’t know, Erasmus is a scholarship for university students coming to or from the EU on exchange programs.
In this episode we’ll be introducing you to a new online magazine and hearing about some language challenges for non-native English speakers.
But be careful! Learning English could lead to some very strange results when you go back home!
And why talking about mundane everyday things for ages could actually be a sign of something good!
Continue reading “coded English +++ Outside magazine +++ Absolutely Intercultural 248 +++”
Well I hope that you have recovered from hearing about all those gory details about life on the farm in the last show! This is the first show of 2020 so Happy New Year! In this show we go to the UK because there, finally three and a half years after the referendum on whether to leave the EU, the UK government has managed to pass legislation that takes the UK to the next stage. Anyway all our contributors today are migrants to the UK. But you will probably learn almost nothing about Brexit from this show. So if you are concerned that this will be about arcane constitutional corners of Britain or obscure trade rules then please don’t worry!
So what will we be hearing about? Would our contributors recommend migrating to the UK from the EU right now, for example?
And how is the transition from freedom of movement to getting permission to stay making migrants feel?
Although we talked long and hard about being a migrant in the UK, our third contributor, Konrad, did not even mention Brexit. Instead, he gave what I think is the best description I have heard so far of what an intercultural coach does.
Continue reading “effect of accents +++ Brexit +++ Absolutely Intercultural 246”
From a university internship to a career as an intercultural trainer we’ll be talking to people at both ends of their career in show 244 of absolutely Intercultural. My name’s Anne Fox and this show is coming to you from Denmark.
First, Gabrielle Lachance, a French Canadian Masters student interning with a consultancy company in Denmark, tasked with getting a good response rate to a survey about electrification in southern African countries. But what are the chances of getting a good response when you send an email asking for complicated technical information to people that you have no connection with?
And then I talked to Iris Schneider who I met at the SIETAR congress in Belgium in June who is an intercultural trainer based in Bonn Germany. How did she get her first intercultural trainer job? She applied as a relocation expert and then this happened!
Continue reading “remote surveys +++ formal language +++ intercultural training +++ Absolutely Intercultural 244 +++”
This show is about growing stronger overseas. Maybe you’ve always dreamed about a new life or modifying your old one? You will hear about two students who used their time abroad to reinvent themselves and discover how they managed this change with SMART goals. You will be surprised how these students spent most of their energy.
Harigautham Somasundaram, from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, spent a semester at RheinAhrCampus, Germany, doing an academic internship. He explains how he moulded a new personality using a technique he learned in Germany – SMART goals. Marina, from Germany, shares her personal transformation in China. Initially, she was too scared to order food from a restaurant in China, but by the end, she was exploring the Chinese country-side far away from the trodden paths of regular tourists.
Continue reading “Growing Stronger Abroad +++ Germany and Shanghai +++ Hari and Marina +++ Absolutely Intercultural 243 +++”
I am hoping that by the end of this show you will want to buy a book called ‘Toothbrush and other plays’, as this will help the wonderful Hands Up project which we are going to hear about. You will find the link to buy the book here.
So what is this show about? It’s about the difficulties of getting to and from Gaza in Palestine. It’s about the power of storytelling as a way of learning language and it’s about ingenious ways of getting classes in Palestine to create and perform plays to audiences all over the world. Nick Bilbrough is the man behind the project, and I caught up with him at the IATEFL conference in Liverpool in April where teachers of English from all over the world gather to exchange ideas.
Continue reading “Hands Up project +++ Palestine +++ Bilbrough +++ Absolutely Intercultural 242 +++”
In this show, we are going to immerse you in the “culture of barber shops” which means you can expect to meet rough guys with motorcycles, full beards, dirty boots and, of course, a beer can in their hands.
First, we will listen to Tomi, perhaps the happiest barber in Australia, who shares his daily life as an employee in Scumbags Barbershop. Rashad, our exchange student from Azerbaijan is our second guest and will tell us his points of view about the barbershop culture. And finally, we will go listen to Tomi again, and this time he will tell us about the Scumbags philosophy.
I’m sitting here in Denmark after having attended the annual IATEFL conference in Liverpool in the UK. There are always people from all over the world at this conference, which is one of the biggest gatherings of teachers of English as a foreign language in the world and this year was no exception.
One really nice surprise for me was to meet up with We’am Hamdan who I had recently worked with virtually. I love working online but it’s always nice to meet people face to face and We’am had travelled a long way from Palestine to be in Liverpool where she was leading a session for the IATEFL Global Issues special interest group. We’am was talking about a really interesting and universal topic so we have decided to devote this whole show to it.
Continue reading “gender issues +++ Palestine +++ IATEFL +++ Absolutely Intercultural 238 +++”
Thanks to Katie Stewart who contacted us about an interesting initiative she had heard of and which means that for the first time on Absolutely Intercultural we’ll be hearing about make-up and how that differs across cultures.
And we’ll also be going to China to find out more about the universal social monitoring that you read so much about.
Happy New Year! In this show, we are going to go back to shows 70 and 74 in 2008 and 2009 when I talked to Signe Møller here in Denmark about a new charity she had just set up.
This show, 234, is ten years later, so why am I re-visiting Signe’s charity 100% to the children? Because I bumped into a stall for her charity at a local Christmas market last November and I was curious to find out how this one-woman organisation was doing.