Achieving Mutual Understanding

For the last two decades, the number of foreign-born instructors in US universities has been growing due to the globalization of education. There is a nationwide concern over foreign-born instructors'' communication problems. A large body of research has been conducted on the foreign-born instructors'' linguistic and cultural differences, but few have shown what may be done to cope with these differences. This book provides a problem- solution approach to foreign-born instructors'' communication problems. Based on a large number of instructional interactions and the participants'' reflexive accounts, the study shows that foreign- born instructors and US college students are not victims of linguistic and cultural differences, but active problem solvers. The participants used different strategies to deal with their communication problems. The findings reveal that interactional skills and positive attitude play a pivotal role in the mutual achievement of a share understanding across linguistic and cultural boundaries. The indepth analyses here should be particularly informative for educators and students in intercultural education.