Final Essay Assignment

Individual final essay assignment
(60%, 1200-1500 words excluding references, due 12 Dec)
Choose one of the following questions to write an analysis essay of 1200-1500 words
1. Personal identity narrative:
This paper is an exploration of what you yourself bring to the communication since the understanding of oneself is an essential part of understanding others, which altogether facilitate communication.
a. Use the concepts about identity, values, norms, beliefs, cultural practices, cultural patterns and competence... to reflect on your cultural experience.
b. Be selective, choose some of the most influential elements only
c. Discuss how your cultural narrative influences and shapes your identity and how your identity and cultural beliefs have affected the ways in which communication occured in particular situations or across situations. Be sure to focus on your cultural background and how it shapes how you communicate, what you communicate about, what expectations you have of others, etc.
d. Your family may be one of the greatest sources of influence on your identity formation, but don’t just discuss the influence of family.

2. Intra/ cross/ Intercultural material analysis.
Basically, this assignment is the same as task 2 in the group presentation project. However, you are going to write an essay by yourself rather than do a group project. If you already choose task 2 for the group presentation project, and continue to choose this task for the individual essay assignment, you must choose different materials for analysis.

3. Intercultural reflection
a. Reflect on what you have learnt from the course.
b. Please tell a story in which culture shock occurs (stories can be collected from different sources. Yet, we highly appreciate stories based on your own experience), explain what leads to misunderstanding/
c. What can you learn from the story? Can you connect it with any aspect of your life (e.g. relationships, study, job, family, travel, etc)?
d. How can cultural differences be utilized as important resources rather than barriers for successful intercultural communication encounters?

* Requirements for essay writing
- Topics must be chosen and registered with your lecturers before you start your work.
- Choose the materials carefully, and analyze the materials in the light of concepts in intercultural communication that you think particularly relevant (e.g ethnocentrism, acculturation, values, cross-cultural pragmatics, verbal communication...). Discuss in relation to the course materials and your reading. Your essay should contain:
1) brief literature review of the concept(s) chosen with proper referencing
2) description of the segment(s)/material(s) that relate to the concept(s)
3) analysis and discussion how this segment informs the concept(s) and helps us understand the concept(s).
- Be tentative!!! You are using knowledge of cross-cultural communication to sharpen your observation, but not to generalise because you are analysing only a small fraction of a culture/some cultures.
- This is an individual essay, plagiarism will be severely punished.
- Peer feedback is allowed. If you use peer feedback, hand in copies of all versions with peer feedback and your changes, and your final version.
- Format: essay, font Times New Roman, size 14, 1.5 spacing, printed on two sides, stapled, no cover or binding required. (Save the environment). Your names, class, title of the project all in half of the first page.
- Sources of reference must be clearly stated following APA format
- Hand in both hard and soft copy (email the soft copy to your lecturer)
- Submit your final essay according to the agreed schedule. Late papers will be accepted, but will be marked one grade lower than the grade deserved for every day of delay.