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Raising Undergraduate Students’ Level of Academic Readiness through Teaching Intercultural Communication

Many times studies in academic journals are hard to understand. A study was done because the reseacher realized that students in Kuwait had no experiences talking to people outside of their culture. The study was to help teach kids how to interact with people in a different culture. Here's a simplified way of reading the study:

Introduction
A researcher noticed that students in Kuwait are often taught to memorize material rather than use it to apply to real life. Their focus on memorization has taken away their skills to interact with other people from different cultures. The main goal of the study is to make sure that the students are good at their basic school curriculum, as well as communicating and interacting with people in a different culture. Many of them have never had to interact with anyone in a completely different culture.

Theoretical Background and Previous Research
The research is based off of Deardorff's ideas towards working with and understanding different cultures. According to him, there are 4 main parts to being good at interacting with different cultures:

1. Continous Learning: Students and people need opportunities to evaluate how well they understand other cultures over time.

2. Critical- Thinking Skills: Having the ability to think critically is important to show how much of different cultures you understand and to improve learning about them.

3. Attitude: Having a good attitude towards what culture will help you take in more and get a good experience out of interacting with another culture.

4. Perspectives: Learning and understanding other people's perspective of how they live or the stories they can share about their culture will help you learn more.

The Significance of the Theoretical Background
The researcher chose Deardorff's model because it closely aligned to what he is researching. The researcher wanted to focus on helping students get better at communicating with different cultures.

Semi-Structured Interviews
The researcher asked what the students knew about communicating with different cultures. He made sure to keep the enviornment friendly and relaxed to help make everyone comfortable. After the interviews, the rresecher asked how the course has helped them. the interviews were 45-60 minutes in person.

Methodology
The researcher used a qualitative methodology for their research. The research collected information to help students better themselves, to get better at communicationing with other cultures, and learning about topics that were challenging to them. The six stages of research he used were:

1. Identifying the problem

2. Collecting data

3. Reflecting

4. Analysis

5. Taking Action

6. Reidentifying the problem

Results
The results were sorted into four main themes:

'''Theme 1: Misconceptions About Intercultural Communication ''' Many students had a skewed view of what intercultural communication was. They thought of it as cusine, language, and religion. The students had a hard time understanding the difference between culture and religion.

Theme 2: Improvemnets Post-intervention

Students showed improvements in understanding different perspectives from different cultures. They had a more positive attitude towards learning about new cultures. They were more willing to learn new things.

Theme 3: Post-Intervention Confidence

Students found an increase in confidence when talking to someone in a different culture. They felt more comfortable interacting with people even though they shared different cultural lifestyles.

Theme 4: Increased Curiosity

Student started to be more curious about the world and cultures around them. They became more well aware of the people around them.

Below are a direct quotation from each theme:

Theme 1: Students had to define cultural differences in their own terms "The word culture was mentioned in our Islamic studies. Islam taught us how to respect other religions and cultures. Kuwaiti education cares about Islamic studies which represent the culture of Kuwait (cycle two student)."

Theme 2: Students talk how how to improve their perspective on cultures "I understand now that dealing with people from other cultures is different from dealing with people from the same culture; they think differently and see the world differently (cycle one student)."

Theme 3: Students talk about their increase confidence "I did not want to talk in class, but now I see that I can say things if other people can say things (cycle two student)."

Theme 4: Students shared their curiosity towards cultures. One student wanted to learn more about social relationships and interactions. "I want to know what families are like in other cultures, such as who live together, and how they treat their families. I would also like to know how students talk to their teachers and each other at school (cycle two student)."

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