Students list experiences of difference and the teacher helps them to classify them. The categories that emerge from the classification of differences in human experience are used later in building models of culture.

In this activity, students look at pictures of houses and their contents from around the world, in order to identify similarities in human needs (such as shelter, comfort, food, drink) and differences in the ways by which these needs are fulfilled.

The way people perceive foreign cultures influences their ability to communicate with people from said culture. Thus, developing observation skills is key for Intercultural Communication. This activity encourages students to look for patterns in the culture they are observing, to triangulate, test hypotheses, and keep their minds open to other possible explanations for what they observe. In short, it is designed to help students “to see ourselves as others see us”.

In order to engage with (intercultural) experience, we need to see it. This activity can be used to convince students that they do not perceive everything going on around them. In it, they are given an observation task that induces them NOT to see some totally unexpected things that are happening within their field of vision. This activity originated in a psychological experiment first reported in 2010 (https://doi.org/10.1068/i0386) which then led to a book (http://www.theinvisiblegorilla.com/) and a number of online videos.

This is an activity that encourages students to observe, speculate about, and gather information on salient differences in the (foreign) environment. It is mainly a discussion activity which begins with specific salient differences and encourages a specific approach/attitude to thinking about and investigating them