Carter Anderson
Intercultural knowledge and communication
Part of growing in intercultural knowledge has involved reading about the experiences of others. In Annie Ernaux's Une Femme, Ernaux opened to me a new understanding of French culture. The contrast between a life in the countryside of Lillebonne, marked by hard work and suffering, and that of the well-to-do Parisians gave context to past and recent events in France's political climate. While living in France during the Summer of 2018, I was able to have many conversations with friends and professors about the customs and social differences because of engaging in literature such as Une Femme. The annotated essay below further points to the ways French has improved my conversational skills.
Helping others improve their language fluency is often one of the best ways to augment your own conversational skills. Working in such a didactic setting has been beyond beneficial in ameliorating my teaching, as well as conversational, abilities...
...Learning new ways in which people learn best has helped me to be more diverse in my approaches. Whether helping others with genetics lab work or how to ask where the restrooms are in French, being a lab aide gave me a new understanding of how to best communicate ideas to those who process information in different ways than myself.