Student Instruction Page

This unit was provided for you to learn everyday communication skills typical of standard American English. You may be offered this unit at your orientation session at Iowa State University or during the first days at the University. Alternatively, you may as well do the activities yourself.  Feel free to navigate the site at your own pace and order, but we encourage you to begin with the pre-activity quiz.

As part of this teaching unit, you will be introduced to some of the issues surrounding your arrival at Ames, USA, and the very first days of adjustment. All video materials in the unit were recorded in public locations in the Ames community, such as the First National Bank of Ames and West Hy-Vee food store. Therefore, you are likely to encounter these places and people!

The unit is made up of the following components:

• Pre-activity test: It is designed to help you develop an idea about the everyday communication problems you may encounter in an English-speaking community.
• Thematic parts: These are the parts of the unit-each of them is devoted to a different communication situation based on the place where the communication takes place: “Bank”, “Supermarket”, “Hotel”, “Fast-food restaurant”, etc. Each part contains a reading text providing an overview of the situation, a set of interactive tasks such as cloze (filling in gaps) and matching activities, and a video file where you can watch the ISU international students handling everyday communication situations.
• Post-activity test: It is designed for you to try out some of the communication skills you have learned and to have fun at the same time.
• “Share your story” database: The database is a collection of real stories generously provided by the ISU international students where they tell about their first days experience in Ames and the difficulties they had due to cultural and language barriers. Feel free to search the database for stories shared by people from your country, or the stories taken place in a particular setting. We would appreciate if you contribute your own story to our collection.

To start working, begin with the pre-activity test, then proceed to the thematic pages. On each page we suggest starting with the text to get the general cultural information about a certain topic, and then doing the interactive tasks. For matching activities, you will need to click on the right boxes and drag them to the proper boxes on the left. Video files provide an additional support for you to go through the pages. After you are done with the thematic pages, go to the post-activity test. Answer the questions one by one; some of the items contain audio files, so you will need to use headphones. Good luck!

Note: The unit is supposed to be further developed, i.e. more topics could be added to help you to look for housing, to make local and long-distance calls, to use postal services, etc. We would appreciate your comments and suggestions. You may e-mail them to volkerh@iastate.edu. 

 Cultural Gap Homepage