Training the trainers: what do professional communicators need to be aware of in intercultural communication?

Sun, Jing

Introduction

With the population of immigrants increasing in the last few decades in the United States, the school districts have been facing increasing challenges in the education of the immigrant students and the communication with the families who do not speak English. Members of this community are challenged by conditions of their class, race, and language background and many immigrant families are facing the double challenges of acculturation and economic disadvantage (training handouts, 2006). They feel confused in negotiating the American school system and dealing with the changed situations and changed relationship between parents and their children. The role of the intercultural mediators or professional communicators in social contexts such as educational institutions, community based organizations and public services become increasingly important. Given the complex nature of the communication involving people with different cultural backgrounds and given the clashes of thoughts and behaviors among these immigrant families in the two-track acculturation process, the professional communicators have to have special knowledge, positive attitudes and intercultural communication skills to be able to cope with all kinds of issues and situations. There is the need for training among these communicators to increase their knowledge, cultural awareness and ability to ensure their effective and successful communication with the immigrant families.

Various communication approaches and projects have been designed and implemented to improve the communication between the school and non-English speaking parents and between the parents and their children. The whole notion is to open the door and provide an access for these parents to the American educational system on one hand and to promote family strengths and family functioning on the other.

This paper investigates a few potential barriers in intercultural professional communication and how these issues were treated or not treated in the training--a project designed to train the staff who were selected by community based organizations to conduct regular workshops for non-English speaking parents. Intercultural communication, awareness of cultural difference, stereotyping and language use will be discussed. By drawing upon the recent research and theories in intercultural communication and through the analysis of the issues, this paper tries to answer the following questions:

1) Is this training on parenting skills related to intercultural communication?

2) If yes, what are the potential barriers these professional communicators need to be aware of in intercultural communication?

3) Did the training help increase the professional communicators' awareness and develop their intercultural communication competence?

It is claimed that professional communicators working with non-English speaking parents need to increase their awareness of the potential barriers and intercultural communication competence in order to handle the complex issues and conflicts. Intercultural communication should be one of the important components in the training provided for intercultural professional communicators.

Professional Communicators and Intercultural communication

Professional communicators, according to Scollon and Scollon (2001), refer to "anyone for whom communication is a major aspect of his or her work" (p.3), such as nurses, translators, teachers and trainee manager. In this paper, I include both the trainer and participants (prospective trainers) in this category due to the communicative nature of their work. The trainer's task was to develop participants' communication skills as well as other related skills and to ensure that the participants understand fully the content and learn from this training through listening, reading and discussing. On the other hand, the participants would conduct their workshops as trainers later for non-English speaking parents. The purpose of these workshops would be for the trainers to communicate effectively with the parents, specifically, to help improve the communication between the parent and child.

Intercultural communication generally refers to "face-to-face interaction among people of diverse cultures" (Jandt, 1998:36). But "culture is a notion that is often difficult to grasp" (Erickson, 1997:33). In communication across the cultures, the boundaries between cultures are most often marked by political or national boundaries between countries. However, Erickson' s (1997) orienting assumptions on culture are that "every person and every human group possesses both culture and cultural diversity" (p 34). This is especially true in the complex modern world as well as in the countries of immigration like the United States. He gives an example to illustrate: Mexican Americans are not culturally identical to Puerto Ricans living on the mainland, but not all Mexican Americans or Puerto Ricans are culturally identical even if they live in the same neighborhood and attend the same school (p.34). According to Scollon & Scollon (2001), none of us can be fully defined by our membership in any single group and we all are simultaneously members of multiple groups or "discourse systems"(p.170). Therefore, they argue that all communication is to some extent intercultural. Singer (1998) also states that in any interpersonal communication, the individual actually functions somewhat "interculturally". The difference lies only in degree. That is, the fewer group identities the two interlocutors share, the more "intercultural" is the communication between them.

"Communication works better when the participants share more assumptions and knowledge about the world"(Scollon & Scollon, 2001:21). That is, if two people have similar backgrounds and experiences, their communication is likely to work easily. If any two people differ in group membership such as gender, education, histories, ethnic and cultural groups, each will find it more difficult to draw inference about what the other person means. This is where mis-communication may occur. Their approach to intercultural/ interdiscourse professional communication is to increase shared knowledge and to assume that miscommunication will occur and will need to be dealt with.

Regarding miscommunication between people of diverse cultures, the sources have been traced to "the distinctive nature of the value systems, pervasive configurations of social relations, and dominant ideologies of cultural groups" (Chick, 2005). Therefore, intercultural communication cannot allow the easy assumption of similarity (Bennett, 1998; Jandt, 1998). Since cultures are different in their languages, behavior patterns, and values, an attempt to use one's own experience and judgment to predict shared assumptions and responses to messages is unlikely to work (Bennett, 1998). But assuming difference instead of similarity can be a barrier as well and may lead to failure in recognizing important things that cultures share in common (Jandt, 1998).

Literature Review

The main issue of intercultural communication is "difference" and how to deal with difference (Bennett, 1998). Talking about cultural difference, we tend to think about the differences of history, language, food, music and etc. These, according to Erickson (1997), are visible, explicit aspect of culture and can be learned consciously. What we usually neglect or are unaware of is invisible culture, which is "not only held outside conscious awareness but is also learned and taught outside awareness" (Erickson, 1997: 40). Much of our culture is invisible in our daily life such as the rule of speaking, social behavior, politeness, etiquette and socializing, as is discussed in Erickson (1997). We know when to speak, when not to, what to say to whom, where and in what manner. All these become so habitual that we don't even think about them nor realize their existence. "Objective and subjective culture" are other terms for visible and invisible culture (Bennett, 1998). Subjective culture is "the learned and shared patterns of beliefs, behaviors, and values of groups of interacting people." (Bennett, 1998:3) According to Bennett (1998), understanding objective culture may increase one' s knowledge, but it does not necessarily generate competence. Understanding subjective cultures--one's own and others'--is more likely to lead to intercultural competence (Bennett, 1998).

Besides, there are different levels and categories of culture we need to be aware of. There are cultures within cultures (Jandt, 1998). According to Bennett (1998), national groups are cultures at a high level of abstraction while more specific groups such as ethnic groups are cultures at a lower level of abstraction. Other categories of subjective cultural diversity include gender, regionality, socioeconomic class, physical ability, sexual orientation, and etc.

Cultural difference, visible or invisible, does not always lead to trouble between people, but these differences can become more troublesome in some situations (Erickson, 1997). Therefore, we need to pay more attention to those areas that may cause miscommunication. "Differences in invisible culture can be troublesome in circumstances in intergroup conflict" (Erickson, 1997: 41). When other people's verbal or nonverbal behavior is different from the invisible cultural assumptions and behavioral patterns we have learned, we may assume that it is not the good or right way to do things and may see them as rude, weird, or offensive (Erickson, 1997). "The difficulty lies in our inability to recognize others' differences in ways of acting as cultural rather than personal" (Erickson, 1997: 41).

To be a professional in multiethnic societies involves different degrees of intercultural awareness (Jensen, 2004). According to Stier (2004), a major challenge for the social worker is to see and grasp which needs and reaction patterns are universal, and which are culture-specific or unique for the client. Another challenge is about avoiding wrongful or inadequate conclusions where cultural peculiarities are used to explain things which in fact are something all-human or, by contrast, something highly individual. We cannot be certain that we can interpret correctly other people's speech or behavior, but we could "expect things to go wrong" and hesitate to draw any negative conclusion about others' action (Scollon & Scollon, 2001).

Another potential barrier to intercultural communication is stereotyping (Bennett, 1998; Jandt, 1998; Scollon & Scollon, 2001). The word, first used by Walter Lippman in 1922, refers to judgments made about others on the basis of their ethnic or any other group membership (Jandt, 1998). Stereotypes arise when we act as if all members of a culture or group share the same characteristics (Bennett, 1998). Scollon and Scollon (2001) put stereotyping simply as another word for overgeneralization.

There are positive stereotypes and negative stereotypes. Any form of stereotyping is potentially an obstruction to successful intercultural communication; however, negative stereotyping is considered the most obstructive (Scollon & Scollon, 2001). Stereotyping blinds us to other important aspects of a person's character or behavior as well as the real differences between the participants in a discourse (Scollon & Scollon, 2001). They argue that stereotypes limit our understanding of intercultural discourse. Stereotypes are harmful because they impede communication in many ways (Jandt, 1998). Regarding the attitudes towards immigrants, Stephan et al's (2005) research indicate that the negative stereotypes led to significantly more negative attitudes toward the immigrant group than the other types of stereotypes. Repeated miscommunication generates and reinforces negative cultural stereotypes that constitute further barriers to intercultural communication and contribute to forces which maintain the social barrier and inequality, which make it difficult for people to learn one another's conventions (Chick, 1996). It is well illustrated in Stier (2004)'s quote: "In Sweden, if you as an immigrant have problems, you are seen as the problem!" Another example is what Blackledge (2001) described in her research: the English speaking teachers in a school in UK, positioned the Bangladeshi women as deficient in their literacy, their competence as care providers, their access to cultural resources, and their ability to adopt the values and behaviors of the dominant (white, middle-class) group. However, the teachers' positioning of those women conflicted with the women' s view of themselves. Although they could not read English, they were literate in Bengali, and they could have used this literacy to support their children' s reading.

According to Scollon & Scollon (2001), the solution to the problem of oversimplification or binarism and stereotyping is two folds: comparison between groups should always consider both likenesses and differences. In addition, it should be based on more than a single dimension of contrast. However, it is necessary in intercultural communication to make cultural generalizations to director our communication behavior (Bennett, 1998) and for some training programs to focus on a few somewhat stereotypical attitudes and ideas in order to prepare the people to not over-react to some behavior (Scollon & Scollon, 2001). The application outside of one's own culture, as Bennett (1998) indicates, is usually ethnocentric.

Data collection

The site I chose to do the research was the Parent Engagement Office at a school district in the United States. Beginning from January, 2006, I attended the 8week training sessions "Training the Trainers" offered by the office. The objective of the project was "to train staff selected by their community based organizations to conduct regular workshops for parents," and also "to work with community organizations interested in enhancing the parenting skills of the parents they serve that are prepared to present at School District parent meetings or provide time and space to host workshops for parents." (training handouts, 2006). Parenting skills and facilitating skills were the focus of the training, however, it was expected that the participants could adapt it to any topic of their own interests.

The trainer is a multicultural psychologist of Japanese origin with many years of training experiences in parent support workshops. Another trainer, a Khmer-American, came to most of the meetings. The qualification for participants was to "be literate in both the home language of the parents as well as English, demonstrate understanding of the workings of their language community, particularly of the resources available to its members, and the capacity to listen sensitively and be open to the communications of ideas and emotions not mentioned directly in words." (training handouts, 2006) The training session met every Friday morning for eight weeks. The 12 participants were staff from four different community based organizations and associations. Among them, there were 4 Cambodian-Americans, 3 Vietnamese-Americans, 1 Chinese and 4 white Americans. They could speak Khmer, Vietnamese, Chinese, Spanish and French respectively in addition to English. They were encouraged to use the parents' language to do their workshops. It was noticed that 4 to 5 Asian-Americans and 1 Chinese came to the meetings regularly while the 4 white Americans attended the first two meetings, and only one white American showed up at the third meeting and none thereafter.

I used ethnographic research methodology. The methods used for data-gathering were participant observation and informal interviews. Through all the discussions and activities in this multicultural setting, I had the chance to observe and experience the dilemma, controversies, and miscommunication discussed in the current research and theories in intercultural communication. Detailed hand-written field notes and the handouts from each training session were used and analyzed in this paper.

Analysis and Discussion The Training and Intercultural Communication

This training on parenting skills was found closely related to intercultural communication in terms of the participants' backgrounds and the training contents despite of the trainer's claim and initial intention that the training would focus on parenting skills in a general sense. Regarding the participants' backgrounds, it was noted that in order to ensure the effective communication between the professional communicators and the parents, being able to speak the parents' home language was required for all the participants. Besides, most of the participants come from immigrant families themselves. They may share, more or less, the immigration experiences. These advantages and shared identities, as was discussed in the literature, would make the communication with the parents easier and less "intercultural". Meanwhile, they help reduce, to some extent, the risk for miscommunication and misinterpretation.

However, each participant has different cultural background and cannot be fully defined in one category or group such as Vietnamese or Cambodians. Even the word Cambodian was controversial during the discussion due to political reasons: some participants preferred to define themselves as Khmer rather than Cambodian. Many of the participants seemed to maintain several identities that link them to more than one nation. This was shown in a Cambodian-American participant' s statement on the parent hitting the child. ("P" refers to the participant.)

Example 1

P1: "If kids do something wrong, they (Cambodian parents) do this (hitting) to teach them this is wrong so that they will not do it any more. Our (Cambodian) culture is quite different." When asked in what language he thought, he answered, "It depends. Sometimes, I do translation (between the two languages when I think). I have been here for 20 years. It (English) is just a click, easy! I am Americanized."

As was indicated, he claimed himself a Cambodian at one time by saying "our culture", but a member in American society at another time by using "Americanized". He seemed to distinguish himself from other Cambodian parents by using "they" whereas he admitted he was not an American who could think in English all the time. He had to do translation between the two languages in his mind sometimes. Another example was in a Vietnamese-American' s statement.

Example 2

P2: I'll combine both Vietnamese culture and American culture together, teach my kids what my parents taught me. But for some (Vietnamese) parts, I'll never teach my kids."

The two examples indicate their connection and sense of belonging to both memberships on one hand, but they did not fully define themselves as either identity on the other. Some of the participants were born or/and educated in the United States, some were "Americanized", as was claimed, and others may not share any of those parents' immigration experiences. In this sense, their communication with the parents should be better considered as intercultural communication.

In addition, this training itself was multilingual and multicultural though only English was spoken at the meeting. The communication between the trainer and the participants of diverse cultural backgrounds and among the participants themselves was culturally challenging and complex. This made the communication even more "intercultural" and increased the risk for miscommunication and misinterpretation.

In terms of the training content, the discussion actually went far beyond parenting skills and other issues were raised by the participants at the meetings. The trainer made it clear during my brief interview with him after the second meeting, that parenting skills were introduced in a general sense, and he would not define it as intercultural communication training. However, the following conversation showed the other side of the coin at the second meeting when the trainer just began to introduce communication skills ("T" refers to the trainer and "P" refers to the participant).

Example 3

T: Communication patterns exist in these families. It perhaps works well in other countries, but not work here- kids challenge the teachers. In Asian countries, kids don't challenge their teachers... Help them with their communication patterns. Idea of having family meeting once a week may be a good way to start.

P3: I would hesitate to talk to parents... change the parents, to change their communication patterns. We need to respect others. We can not say just because other people do it, it works, you' ll have to do it. Maybe, they would say 'you don't need to say that. That is your way, your culture.' This country is educated. We cannot say 'you live in my country, you must behave that way.' At least, white people won't do so. ...

P4: Another thing we should be aware of is that, for us, knowing their culture, it is excitement and adventure, but for them, they would not feel comfortable. They tend to reject it. We should be aware of it either in our communication with parents or in this training." ...

T: Is there a better way to do it? Is it translating your culture as better than their culture?

P5: Sometimes, it's not the matter of cultural difference, but the level of education. Some lower, uneducated parents in China hit their kids.

Three issues were raised in this conversation that needs our attention. First, intercultural communication issues were raised by the participants when a topic concerning parenting skills was introduced. The point here and the following discussion was whether one should teach the immigrant parents to change their communication patterns, whether we should show respect for other people's culture and whether we will be accepted by others. This suggests that parenting skills is not only about parenting skills, but involves some sensitive issues such as acculturation, ideological value, education and more specifically, the change of one's communication patterns, in other words, to change one' s habits. It should be recognized that for some people, it is not that easy to change the habits. Change of one' s communication patterns could mean the change of one' s identity. The trainer did not confront these issues but passed the questions to the participants.

Second, there were some conflicts and tensions between the participants and the trainer though both parties intended to contribute to the training and parent workshops. These conflicts and tensions originated from their different attitudes and views on how to help the immigrant parents in their communication. They were shown in the trainer's attempt to implement his parenting skills plan and some participants' immediate questioning and rejecting of his way of doing it. It also reflected the intercultural professional communicators' dilemma--"Is there a better way to do it" without "translating your culture as better than their culture?", as was raised by the trainer. Good intention and willingness to help seems not enough to handle the complex situation. It suggests that professional communicators should be aware of the dilemma, or potential barriers, and prepare for the unexpected in intercultural communication.

Third, stereotyping and "othering" were clearly revealed in the language of the professional communicators without their awareness. In the conversation quoted above, the trainer seemed to assume that in all Asian countries, kids don' t challenge the teachers whereas the P3 claimed that the whole country was educated and would not force other people to change. Further, she limited the group to "white people", and as a result, distinguished white people in terms of education from other races that may include not only the Japanese-American trainer but also other non-white participants. Thus, her way of saying things produced potential communication barriers and might be interpreted by "others" as being "ethnocentric" though her intent was to try to prevent other people from being "ethnocentric".

The following quote is the mission of a community-based organization:

   To help immigrants and refugees participate fully in
   American Society, we will help immigrants and
   refugees by protecting their legal rights,
   strengthening families and promoting self-sufficiency,
   eliminating barriers caused by language
   and cultural difference and promoting public
   awareness of the benefits of diversity in American
   Society.

This mission shows all the professional communicators' good intention and challenging work. However it might be understood otherwise in the communication across the culture if the professional communicators were not aware of the barriers and not careful about their language use, as is discussed above.

The analysis above provides the answer to my first research question: the training focusing on parenting skills was closely related to intercultural communication and therefore, intercultural communication issues need to be addressed explicitly at the training. My next questions are: what are the potential barriers the professional communicators need to be aware of? Did the training help increase the participants' awareness and develop their intercultural communication competence?

Barriers to Intercultural Communication

Some major potential barriers for intercultural professional communicators are identified in their talk at the meetings. They are ignoring cultural differences, unawareness of one' s own stereotyping, and inappropriate use of language, some of which were analyzed and discussed in the previous part. Meanwhile, some good strategies were also identified in the training. They will be expounded further below:

Ignoring cultural differences

In the first few sessions, cultural differences seemed to be ignored by the trainer, either intentionally or unintentionally. Whenever there were cultural issues raised by the participants, the trainer would either pass the questions to the participants or emphasize individual differences rather than cultural differences. However, the importance of developing intercultural professional communicator' s cultural awareness was illustrated in the following example. At the second meeting of the training, following a heated discussion about the parent hitting the child, the trainer assigned an activity "Identifying the feelings". It was pair work, in which one participant told a story of any kind, real or imagined, about a situation where he/she felt emotional such as angry, embarrassed, and frustrated but no feelings should be described; the other was supposed to listen, rephrase the story and tell what the feelings his/her partner has at that moment, and then get feedback from the person.

My partner, a Khmer-American, shared her school experience with me. When she was a little girl, she was invited to dance with a school group at the White House. The security officer was to search her body at the White House entrance before she was allowed to enter and dance. She refused to be searched. Later the teacher called her parents. The teacher refused to admit her to the dancing class from then on because she could not observe the rules. I identified her feelings as "ashamed and frustrated," which she confirmed was correct.

Growing up in a Khmer family, she was taught that it was a shame for a woman's body to be searched by others. Even though it was just a regular security check at the White House, which was very common to all Americans, the little girl would not accept it. Her belief and value instilled through the enculturation process was invisible to others as well as herself, yet it led to the consequent behavior--to reject, not to accept shame, not to put herself in an embarrassing situation, even at the risk of being criticized by the teacher. Of course, she did not realize that such a behavior would produce a serious result. The problem here lies with the teacher who failed to recognize the little girl' s behavior as cultural rather than personal. If the teacher, a professional communicator, had had some knowledge or awareness of the cultural differences, especially the invisible culture, he would not have hold such a negative view toward the little girl and she would not have been rejected from the dancing class. The teacher, instead, could show understanding and help her understand the rules in the White House.

I identified my partner' s feelings correctly because we both shared some knowledge and identities such as Asians, women and intercultural professional communicators. We both had cross-cultural experiences and developed an awareness of the cultural differences.

This was a very good activity to develop the participants' awareness of cultural differences as well as individual differences. Each participant's assumption of his/her partner' s feelings could be at different levels of the culture or at personal levels. The responses to the same situation may vary culturally and individually. It would be most interesting and instructive to analyze and understand all those different levels and identify those caused by the cultural difference but taken as individual difference. But unfortunately, the participants were not given any opportunities to discuss or comment on their activities at the meeting, the trainer wrapped up the exercises by emphasizing individual differences rather than cultural differences. Culture seemed not to be an issue nor emphasized in the agenda or handouts for the first few meetings. Most of the time, it was brought up by the participants and usually led to heated discussion. When this happened, the trainer would express his opinion without much feedback to the participants and then bring the topic back to the agenda such as listening skills and communication skills.

Stereotyping

It is important to develop professional communicators' awareness of cultural differences. However, professional communicators have to be very careful not making judgments about individuals based on their group membership. This is where stereotyping occurs. As Bennett (1998) pointed out, whenever cultural differences are discussed, the allegation of stereotyping is not far behind. Some participants' stereotyping was clearly revealed in their conversations without their awareness. Meanwhile, the trainer' s intervention and treatment of the stereotyping were skillful and implicit, but went unnoticed unfortunately.

One typical example on stereotyping and "othering" was already given previously. Please see detailed analysis and discussion (third issue) in Example 3.

An example related to negative stereotyping was found in the discussion at the second meeting of the training. One Cambodian-American participant recounted a story in order to show how different their culture was from American culture:

Example 4

P1: Hit! It is abuse here. They (Cambodian parents) break the arm, slap the butt. The consequence is the teacher comes to you. If kids do something wrong, they do this to teach them this is wrong so that they will not do it any more. Our (Cambodian) culture is quite different. The teacher will let the student keep a book on the head and stay there until school is over. Here (in America), it is abuse. But. (Cambodian) students sit straight, no pointing to teachers. They show respect.

The trainer raised a question after everyone finished, "How many of you slapped your children on the face?" No one raised the hands. Then the trainer continued, "How many of you were slapped by your parents?" three to four Khmer and Vietnamese American participants raised their hands.

The negative stereotype lies in the Cambodian-American participant' s remark described above. Hitting the child or physically punishing the child seemed to be the common practice in every Cambodian family and schools when it was described as "our culture"-the Cambodian national culture. He claimed himself a Cambodian by using "our" while he showed he never slapped his kid on the face. Also, he fixed the Cambodian culture by taking characteristics of some Cambodian people' s belief and behaviors at certain time, in certain families and in certain circumstances as something shared and practiced by all the Cambodian people at all times. Cambodians, therefore, may be considered by other people as uneducated, non-loving, and barbaric. Social workers holding this view may have negative assumptions and attitudes towards these immigrant families and therefore, they may misinterpret these people' s behavior and impede communication.

In contrast, a Chinese participant gave her opinion:

Example 5

P5: Sometimes, it is not the matter of cultural difference, but the level of education. Some lower class, uneducated parents in China hit their kids."

In this remark, Chinese participant was very careful and avoided overgeneralization or stereotyping by using "sometimes", "some lower class, uneducated parents." By using those specific words, she restricted the group of people and avoided imposing stereotypes on the whole Chinese group.

It was noted that the stereotyping was treated skillfully and implicitly by the trainer. The trainer listened without any intervention until everybody finished. The two questions regarding "slapping on the face" were asked by the trainer at the right moment. His intention seemed clear: even if it may be perceived as a common practice that Cambodian parents hit their kids, we can not overgeneralize it because there are people from the Cambodian families who do not hit their kids, and there are some people from other cultures who do the same thing, too. This was a very good practice in the training that helped avoid stereotyping. Another reason for the trainer doing this might be to show that growing up in the U.S., one learns a better way to do things- not hit the kids. Unfortunately, the trainer did not express these sentiments in the training and, as a result, it went unnoticed. This led to another example.

A Vietnamese-American participant continued to tell a story about a Chinese family following the trainer' s intervention. In the end, she gave her conclusion.

Example 6

P6: Chinese parents love son more than daughters.

The Chinese participant responded immediately by saying that this may happen in the countryside, but not in the cities in China. Then, I raised the pitfall of stereotyping by giving an example from my experience as an international classroom speaker. When I gave presentations on Chinese culture, a question that American kids often asked was "Will the baby girl's head be chopped after she is born in China?" The Vietnamese-American participant asked seriously as soon as I finished, "Is that true?"

In this example, in spite of the trainer' s previous intervention, the Vietnamese-American participant was not aware of her stereotypes nor realized that it might be a potential obstruction in her work. She may not have realized the meaning of the word "stereotyping". She tended to hold a stereotypical view whenever cultural differences were raised. She tended to believe, in her mind as well as in her discussion, one or two stories in one community could represent the characteristics of the whole community. She tended to put people in a clear cut category or group.

If professional communicators stereotype a group they work with, they may fail to see the truth and also the other aspects of the individuals, especially the individual's merits. Chinese parents, for example, might be thought as the most cruel, brutal and inhuman if she believed beheading was true. This view can result in miscommunication and misunderstanding of the behavior and speech of the people he or she works with. Even worse, it may lead to prejudice, discrimination and resentment, and create conflicts between those who stereotype and the people who are stereotyped.

Language use

Professional communicators' inappropriate language use may lead to further conflicts, impede communication and make the communication even more complicated. Some typical examples were found and discussed in Example 3. Unfortunately, neither the trainer nor the participants were aware of their language use and its bad consequence. By saying "In Asian countries, kids don't challenge their teachers", the trainer seemed to assume that in all Asian countries, kids don't challenge the teachers. By saying "This country is educated", the P3 seemed to claim that the whole country was educated and would not force other people to change. Further, P3 limited the group to "white people", and as a result, distinguished white people in terms of education from other races that may include not only the Japanese-American trainer but also other non-white participants. Thus, her use of language produced potential communication barriers and might be interpreted by "others" as being "ethnocentric" though her intention was to try to prevent other people from being "ethnocentric".

While stereotyping existed in some participants' thoughts and conversation, there were some good strategies used in the discussion to avoid overgenerationization and conflicts. Some participants chose their words carefully by saying "some Chinese parents" and "sometimes they do" to limit the size of the group and the frequency of the behavior. Some stated the fact and reality, "As far as I know, some people who can speak very good Cambodian cannot write".

There are some other good strategies used in this training. Compare and contrast in many aspects was a good way to let the participants see more of those immigrant families in less negative pictures. When commenting on the cultural differences, the trainer always emphasized that it is not right or wrong, good or bad, but only 'different'." Some of the issues were related to the parents' educational level and their economic status rather than the national culture. Group discussion in multilingual and multicultural settings sometimes can be very helpful in avoiding stereotyping. If one stereotypes a group, another in that group may immediately become defensive, as in the case of the Chinese culture. By listening to and speaking from all perspectives, the participants became aware that there exist cultural differences as well as individual differences, and similarities.

Implication for future training

There is the need for cross-cultural or intercultural communication training for professional communicators and practitioners (Brislin & Yoshida, 1994a, 1994b; Sollon Scollon, 2001; Robinson & Gilmartin, 2002). Gannon' s (1997) research shows that trained participants reported a significant higher level of cultural awareness. Regarding "traditional technical training" programs, Scollon & Scollon (2001) point out that many skills, which are considered as universal skills, are really ideological values of a particular discourse system. For some organization who hires training consultant to "teach common writing skills", considered as universal skills, what they really want, but do not know they want, is intercultural communication skills (Scollon & Scollon, 2001). They argue that any training program has an intercultural or interdiscursive component.

Some values and biases cannot be changed or modified easily. Moreover, people may not want to change some of their values. However, being aware of their existence and their effect on their interactions with others can at least help trainees monitor their ethnocentrism (Brislin & Yoshida, 1994a) Also, the professional communicators need to be aware that the act of acquiring something new is inevitably the act of "losing" something old and a change in basic values; it is extremely difficult, slow, and rare (Kim, 2001). A person can be pressed to conform to requirements in social interactions, but cannot be forced to accept and appreciate the underlying values (Goffman,1961, cited in Kim, 2001).

Taking immigrant students' cultures and households as learning resources is a new concept. Hone & Cha's (1999) book opens a window for American teachers and suggests that immigrant parents such as Shou Cha can contribute to the process of teaching peace to children, and making peace among diverse groups in America. In the Funds of Knowledge for Teaching Project (Gonzalez, 1995), teachers went into their students' households and communities not as "teachers" but as "learners" seeking to understand the way of their living.

The theory and practice described above actually apply to this training. In a modern society with diverse cultures like the United States, or in intercultural professional communication, like this training with the participants of different cultural backgrounds, invisible culture and our own biases, though hidden and implicit, may affect our understanding and perception of other people. It is suggested that intercultural communication should be one of the important components in the training provided for professional communicators even though it is a traditional technical training. Awareness of cultural differences and self-awareness of bias should be developed through some activities and questions, which the trainer used skillfully in this training. However, the intercultural issues, when raised, need to be addressed explicitly and more analysis and discussion on complex and challenging situations are needed so as to prepare the participants for more effective communication. In the last few meetings of the training, more specific situations and feelings of the families related to culture or acculturation were raised and discussed. Emphasized repeatedly in this training, communication was the key. Communication is dynamic and open to change. Through communication, the training content was modified to meet the participants' needs as the program progressed, which was also what the trainer suggested the participants could do for their own workshops.

Teachers take immigrant students' cultures and households as learning resources. By the same token, immigrant parents, no matter what education they received, what social status they have, what language they speak, can contribute, more or less, to parenting skills and problem solving skills. It is suggested that the professional communicators could take parents as resources while introducing them the new knowledge.

Conclusion

This paper began with the question whether the training program on parenting skills is related to intercultural communication. By using the current theories and concepts, the author analyzed the participant's backgrounds and the training content, especially the issues raised at the training. In spite of its content of general parenting skills and facilitating skills, this training was closely related to intercultural communication because it involved some sensitive issues such as one' s ideological values, habits and identity. These issues together with professional communicators' ignoring or unawareness of cultural differences, stereotyping and inappropriate language use could be potential barriers that impede the communication either at this training or at the future workshops with non-English speaking parents. It is suggested that the training programs like this should increase the professional communicators' awareness of these barriers, specifically, awareness of cultural difference, one's own biases and stereotypes, and one's language use, which are usually hidden and invisible. Future training programs could include intercultural communication as part of the training component and address these issues explicitly. Since people change their identities very slowly and any communication change is a change in identity, the goal of the training could be to change the interpretations people make in intercultural communication (Scollon and Scollon, 2001:284-285).

Note: Jing Sun is currently associate professor at the School of Foreign Languages, Yunnan University of Nationalities in China. She earned MS. Ed. in Intercultural Communication in 2006 from the Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania. Her academic interests lie in intercultural communication, translation, teaching English/Chinese as a foreign language.

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Jing Sun

Yunnan University of Nationalities, China

Correspondence to:

Jing Sun

4th Floor, Bowen Building

School of Foreign Languages

Yunnan University of Nationalities, Yuhua Campus

Kunming, Yunnan 650550,

P. R. China

Phone: 011-86-871-8220439 (H)

Email: iings07@gmail.com or jings99@yahoo.com