Mind the Culture Gap edited by Susan Balogh and Jodi Lindsay : Live Readings of Local Literature to Foster Intercultural Understanding

Susan Balogh and Jodi Lindsay compiled an anthology of anecdotes involving cross-cultural misunderstanding in both English and Japanese, by both Japanese and expatriate writers. The expression “Mind the Gap” is taken from the London underground, where passengers are warned to watch their step when entering a train; this is a metaphor for the pitfalls of cross-cultural communication. I decided to use this as a textbook for required Communicative English classes for second year students majoring in Engineering, Maths and Biology. This paper details the various activities I used to teach discrete skills of reading, listening, spelling, vocabulary, and collocation, and the top-down skill of summarizing a story. Beyond simply providing practice for these language skills, these stories provide humorous illustrations of pragmatic failure, and remind students that there is much more to learning a language than the mechanical skills that tend to dominate many language classrooms.