Cross-cultural Communication with International Instructors

How can we improve understanding and attitudes between students and their international TAs and instructors?

In this multi-site collaboration, we are trying various inter-group contact activities and accent familiarization training with college freshmen and international TAs to improve inter-cultural communication, attitudes, and mutual understanding.

Presentations

• Loss, S. S. & Freeman, V. (under review 2025, March). Attitudes of US undergraduates after a semester-long intergroup contact experience with international students. American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL), Denver, CO.
  
• Freeman, V., Loss, S., & Baese-Berk, M. (2023, May). Interventions to improve undergraduate communication with international instructors. Special Session on Infusing Social Justice in Speech and Hearing Acoustics Pedagogy: Principles and Case Studies, Acoustical Society of America (ASA), Chicago, IL. 
• Loss, S., Freeman, V., Horton, H. N., & Kang, O. (2023, January). Engaging undergraduates in global society through intergroup contact with international peers. Linguistic Society of America, Denver, CO.

People

Collaborators:

• Sara Loss, OSU Linguistics
• Ho'omana Nathan Horton, OSU International TA Program
• Okim Kang, Northern Arizona Applied Linguistics/TESL
• Melissa Baese-Berk, Oregon & Chicago Linguistics

Student Corner

Data and materials:

• Video of ESL instructors giving 5-minute introductory lectures.
• Audio clips from the lectures (30-sec clips, single sentences). 
• Intelligibility and first-impressions sureveys (pre/post-tests) in Qualtrics.
• Inter-group contact activities.
• Accent familiarization training materials.

Project ideas:

• Compare outcomes of the various training tasks.
• Find/create other audio samples of ESL speakers.
• Create/lead iner-group contact activities in classrooms/workshops.