What is PICTURE?

It is a project providing supplementary course material for secondary-school and university students aged 16+. The topic is intercultural communication. Here you find a background article (pdf).

How can the PICTURE material be used?

The material on this site can be used as supplementary material for any English language course, preferably in the form of a "special class project". This "class project" would typically take some 15 hours of student time. Some 6 to 8 hours may be spent in class using some of the "classroom modules". Another 2 to 4 hours should go to individual study in a computer lab with one or two of the "lab modules". All modules can be found on the starting page. The remaining time – some to 3 to 6 hours - is spent on an interview with native speakers of Italian and includes preparation and reporting.

What modules are available?

There are two kinds of modules: those that should be done in class - involving a lot of discussion to make matters clear - and those that are to be done autonomously by students in a multi-media lab. They are available here.

Here are Teacher Notes for each class module:

• Male and female
• Environment (adv)
• Marriage
• Education at school
• Bringing up children
• Using a second language (adv)
• Political correctness (adv)
• Outward Appearance

Some modules are meant for students with a more advanced level than others (indicated by "adv" behind the topic above).

We urge you to do the Introductory Unit - a class module - first because this will give your students an idea what PICTURE is about. It will make them familiar with the basic concepts and terminology, introducing notions such as culture, communication, intercultural, stereotyping, interviewing etc.

The lab modules can be worked through by the students at their own convenient time and place, unless instructed differently by the teacher. Some of these modules elaborate on class modules; others cover new subjects. All lab modules have worksheets with assignments for students. Teachers may require their students to hand in those assignments.

For all the modules as well as the interviews goes that teachers may ask their students to hand in a report, to be put in the students’ portfolios.

 

 

Back to first page English

 

Interviewing foreigners

The core of the PICTURE project is a series of personal interviews to be conducted by students with native speakers on selected intercultural aspects.

For a very quick idea of how some Dutch students do their interview, see these clips. The procedure is explained in detail in How to Interview. It shows how students can conduct these interviews with foreigners. Students can make a selection from 98 questions from the questionnaire provided. Alternatively, they make up their own questions. Ten questions is about all they can ask. Experiments have shown that it is best to have two students carry out the interviews, with one asking the questions and the other one making notes. Do not let students go out on their own!

Results

It is suggested that students write a brief report after the interview(s) for their portfolio. Ideally, students also fill in the responses in our central European database via this website.

Pedagogical principles

Two pedagogical concepts underlie the project:
(1) The importance of authentic foreign language use in actual intercultural contact situations (key concepts: real-life interaction, authenticity, communicative approach).
(2) The importance of strengthening the relation between “school” and the “outside world” through carrying out assignments outside school.

Intercultural Incidents

Here are more than 400 observations by people from all over Europe about other Europeans.

Back to main project page