I’m always interested in not just the language we use to communicate but the cultural ideas behind them. I remember the day that I learnt I had an understood sphere of acceptable personal space when I was communicating with others. I had just moved to Spain and was teaching 7-year-olds. Parent-Teacher meeting day came around and my Spanish was terrible. I had only been learning for 3 months. I worked hard and prepared my reports in Spanish with the help of my colleagues. I learnt them all off by heart and prayed that nobody asked any follow-up questions. One of my students, an amazing girl by the name of Lucia, was doing great in my classes but not so well in her English classes in her primary school. Understandably, but unfortunately for me, her mother had lots of questions.

She came in and caught me at the end of the meeting. I was standing in the corridor and she walked up stopping at a point that she felt comfortable and we began to have a conversation in my very broken Spanish about her daughter. My unconscious understanding of personal space kicked in and I took a step back. She then took a step forward and I took another back. By the end of the conversation when our odd dance had ended, I was 5 classrooms down the corridor with no idea how I’d gotten there.

From that point onward, I’ve been fascinated by all of the personal and cultural aspects of communication. It’s the little things that we assume is the same for everyone. But unless we discuss it, we often remain unaware that what is understood for one person or culture, can be offensive or shocking for another person. For that reason, I always had regular conversations with my students about how people communicate in their cultures. I never saw it as our job to teach this as such. More to facilitate that conversation so that our students can learn from each other and learn to communicative effectively with people from around the world.

This lesson focuses on greeting and encourages students to reflect on how they greet in their culture and to learn what others expect from a greeting. It’s designed for lower levels (elementary / Pre-intermediate) but as it’s an awareness raising lesson, it could be carried out with higher levels.

Intercultural Communication: Greeting

• Level: Elementary / Pre-int (& above)
• Time: 90 minutes
• Objective: to raise awareness of how people greet in different cultures so that we can greet and have short conversations with people from around the world.