Zdanoski Julie E. Crossing Cultural Borders

Compliments of the English Language Office (ELO) Embassy of the United States of America
Moscow, 2004 — 134 p.This book has been designed to provide students with English language, cognitive and communicative skills that will allow them to:
􀂙 Understand their own culture and cultural identities in greater depth and describe these to outsiders;
􀂙 Understand perspectives of people from other cultures, respect cultural differences, and resolve cross-cultural misunderstandings;
􀂙 Develop habits of mind (suspending judgment, moving beyond stereotypical thinking, seeing a situation from more than one point of view) essential to mindful intercultural communication.
As the author is American, many comparisons are drawn between Russian and American cultures, however the textbook includes information about and illustrations from many other cultures. English is, after all, a global language and our students may very well have occasion to use English to communicate with people from many corners of the world.
Crossing Cultural Borders, Russia provides a constellation of starting points for the explora-tion of culture and cultural differences and for the cultivation of cross-cultural skills. Students will become familiar with some of the key concepts of intercultural communication — though we are only scratching the surface, so to speak, and many topics remain for future study.