Issues in Cross Cultural Training: Educating the Imagination with Cross Cultural Approaches to Literacy Development.

An instructor's teaching practices have been influenced by Edward T. Hall's theory in "Beyond Culture," which begins with the notion that "what is known least well and is therefore in the poorest position to be studied is what is closest to oneself," the "unconscious patterns that control us." This wisdom has been useful in planning introductory writing courses using materials on cultural autobiography and anthropology, and recently, in planning a literature-based writing course. The focus was on fiction in which characters encountered new experiences on foreign soil (a cross-cultural initiation when values or beliefs of the new place clash with those of the home setting). Among the books chosen were Isak Dinesen's "Babette's Feast" and Henry James's "The Ambassadors." Students were required to keep journals, in which they recorded their own responses to the literature, and to write a research paper. During class time, students conversed about their journal entries or responded in the margins of each other's journals; they also discussed "lead" questions which modeled a way of making connections between the readings. Meetings ended with students submitting weekly journal entries that could be used in preparing a class ditto for the following week. This ditto would contain excerpts for discussion from student journals. Extensive examples of student writing show the range of sophisticated responses reflecting on issues of cultural literacy and criticism. (Contains 23 references.) (TB)