Becoming Foreign

The Berg reading suggests that students don’t necessary get much out of their experience abroad because they do not take the proper steps to connect with the culture. Students feel like they need to defend their experience abroad and often make generic, unspecific statements like “it transformed me.” Berg argues that this isn’t true, and […]

Maya’s post I found to be incredibly relatable. She discusses the importance of inter-cultural competence, and how it comes with time and patience. I agree with her. Additionally, in her final line, she mentions that books do not necessarily prepare an individual for travel abroad. In fact, more subjective factors, like behavioral patterns, seem to […]

These two articles discuss important ideas and theories concerning the “foreign experience,” that is, that which encompasses an experience abroad, and the repercussions that ensue as a result of this experience. Additionally, the articles, in some way or another, refer to identity and the importance of one’s culture. The article by Bennett discusses cultural levels, […]

Student Learning Abroad: I found this article particularly interesting, perhaps because it speaks, at least partially, to the reason(s) that my experience abroad was not successful: a lack of academic rigor in courses taken, excessive drinking and “related forms of misbehavior” due to a sudden absence of adult supervision, and an unwillingness to engage entirely […]

What I found especially interesting in the Vande-Berg reading was the section where they talked about how studying abroad does not necessarily equate to having a “transformative” or “life changing” experience. As something I hadn’t thought about before, I found it useful when the authors made the distinction between “transformative” as in one’s personal experience […]

In reading both chapters, I had thoughts similar to Jennie’s: as a student who has already studied abroad, I find the study abroad paradigms presented by Vande Berg and Bennett unnecessarily complex and involved in measuring student experiences. Like Jennie, I had not heard of Vande Berg’s study abroad program types or Bennett’s explanations of […]

Like Jennie, I took umbrage with some of the ideas artiulated in the Vande-Berg article. One thought in particular that made me scratch my head was that “students who are academically serious and socially mature – the ones who have earned good grades on campus and who have respected student conduct policies” will somehow be […]

The number of students studying abroad is increasing but all these students get different outcomes from their experience depending on which narrative they had a while abroad. Vande Berg talked different kinds of narratives that students use to view the outside world. There are three master narratives: positivism, relativism, and experiential / constructivism. Positivism narrative […]

I found it interesting that Bennett discussed the differences between monocultural communication and intercultural communication. Monocultural communications is similarity-based, while intercultural communication is difference-based. This made me realize things I take for granted in my everyday, monocultural life, as people I interact with daily use the same language, behavior patterns and have the same values […]

I found it interesting how a single experience could be broken down into the three different interpretations. It seems to me that all these students did was study abroad, and the attitude that they brought with them determined which “approach” they took. In the “learning through experience” paradigm, there is a self-conflicting elitist undertone that states that some […]