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Overcoming culture shock in language learning

October 22, 2004

Andrew Cohen.jpgAn American professor visiting the University of New England spoke about his pioneering work in helping language students make the most of foreign travel.

Professor Andrew Cohen is the Director of the Language Resource Centre at the University of Minnesota. The Centre has produced a new guidebook that helps students analyse and overcome difficulties they face when they travel abroad and try to immerse themselves in a foreign language.

Professor Cohen said that much of the difficulty was a result of “culture shock”, and that the guidebook provided strategies for breaking down this initial barrier. It did this, he said, by focusing on “speech acts” such as requests and apologies, that were “at the intersection of language and culture”.

In one of his two public lectures at UNE, he analysed the results of an experiment (funded by the US Government) with 86 young Americans travelling abroad as part of their foreign-language studies. The experiment demonstrated the benefits of using the guidebook. More generally, he said, his team was getting “great feedback” from users of the book. “Ideally, study abroad can help fluency and awaken a student’s sleeping proficiency in the language,” he said. “We developed the guidebook because we were concerned that some students weren’t getting the maximum benefit from their foreign travel.”

Professor Cohen visited UNE for several days last week as a guest of the University’s School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics and the Language and Cognition Research Cluster. He presented two public lectures and a workshop, and had discussions with UNE’s Dr Karen Woodman, who conducts research on language activation and increased fluency as a result of learning in a foreign country. During her study leave last semester, Dr Woodman spent several days with Professor Cohen at the Centre for Advanced Research in Language Acquisition at the University of Minnesota, and presented a seminar there about her research on study abroad.

Professor Cohen is currently on sabbatical at the University of Auckland. His visit to UNE was part of an Australian lecture tour that is taking him to universities in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane as well as Armidale.

Posted by Jim Scanlan at October 22, 2004 03:58 PM