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ASSESSING STUDENTS PROGRESS IN INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION BASED ON SELF-REFLECTIVE LEARNING DIARIES

Krystyna Heinz

Abstract

The article attempts to present students? progress achieved during the development of a European project Erasmus Intensive Programme Effective Communication in Multicultural Teams approved in 2011 and finalized in March 2013. For the students participating in the IP, especially for Czech students , the course was the first opportunity to communicate with students coming from different culture background, where the teaching methods, approach to students, the extent of students? autonomy, different teaching methods, and also tolerance to ethnic diversity were different. To have feedback from the Czech participants of the IP course their tutors asked them for writing self-reflective learning diaries. They are the source of materials needed for evaluation of students? progress. The questionnaire involved 13 following questions. Here are some of them: What new culture-related issues did you learn? Which cultures represented in the course were similar to your home culture and which were different? What was the most difficult for you during the course? How did your knowledge of English improve? What new English words and phrases did you learn? Do you feel more ready to solve problems in the team in the future? Why, or why not? What was your position in the team? What were you responsible for? What was your relationship to other members of your team? Writing self-reflective learning diaries or journals enables students to express themselves without fear and embarrassment, and contributes to improve students? language skills. Moreover, it contributes to students? becoming more autonomous, take control of their own learning, and in this way become more self-motivated. Learning journals can involve reflective writing, dialogue and role plays writing. Reflective writing used within communication subjects mentioned above is related to writing about what and why they succeeded or failed at certain tasks, and about how they feel about their learning currently. The most important areas the students have to reflect on are learning process – teachers? methods and approach, learning progress, culture-related issues, process of the communication in the multicultural team, team dynamics and problems solving. The programme Erasmus IP involves intensive two weeks of working together in three subsequent years both of students and teachers from six different institutions and different disciplines in order to reflect and develop their communication skills while working in multicultural workgroups. The article firstly attempts to summarize the most important information related to assessing students? progress using self-reflective learning diaries within a European project, next presents a structured questionnaire as the basis of the feedback provided by Czech team students participating in the last round of the Erasmus IP programme held in Finnish Joensuu in February 2014 provided in their self-reflective diaries

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DOI resolver: doi.org/10.5593/sgemsocial2014/B11/S3.083

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