Often it is the simplest and least planned ideas which are the best. Ideas such as Nellie Deutsch’s Storytelling and cultures; an ongoing invitation to learners of English to practice the language by preparing and presenting their culture. Nellie and her colleagues support would-be presenters in preparing their slides and provide the technical support to help presenters talk their way through their prepared slides on the free conferencing system WiZIQ and that’s it. Yet the format is obviously totally compelling, to the extent that Nellie and her colleagues have regulars in their audience and that they forget that they are there to improve their English while all the while their English is improving. Nellie is based in Israel and the initiative attracts people from all over the world including Mexico, Russia, the Yemen and Japan.
Nellie got the idea when she was asked to do a presentation herself as part of a course she was doing a couple of years ago and lighted on the topic of storytelling quite by chance. As an English teacher she wondered if the task of preparing a presentation of one’s own culture might help learners and it seems that she has hit on a winning formula. The task includes all the language skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing (in the WiZiQ text chat or later in the asynchronous discussion forums at Ning). You can hear Nellie describing the phenomenon on the latest Absolutely Intercultural podcast.
Also included in the show is a follow-up on Greg Houfe’s experiences as a consultant in Denmark. I interviewed him in May when the project was in the offing and at that time he was quite certain that he would encounter universal European business practices. But it didn’t turn out that way especially since he ran into the main holiday season here in Denmark which is in July. This meant that he had to be extremely tactical in setting up meetings with the people he needed to talk with! The question is, was this due to a difference in national culture or company culture? The jury is still out on this one though the verdict will probably assign responsibility to both in the end.
One interesting aspect of this podcast which I don’t believe has happened before is that you can make a clear ‘before’ and ‘after’ comparison since Nellie put the full unedited conversation on the Storytelling Ning while I edited the conversation down to fit the usual Absolutely Intercultural format. I like to think that I edit fairly and for the first time it is possible for others to judge!