Navigating Cultural Differences in Business
Aims
Goal: deliver the same piece of difficult news twice — calibrated for a direct culture and an indirect one — so the message survives and the partnership does too.
The lesson, stage by stage
- Warm up5 min
Warm-up: One message, two settings
2 warm-up questions
- Reading10 min
Reading: The message that arrives twice
Read a 224-word text about The message that arrives twice
- Vocabulary8 min
Vocabulary: Cultural Adaptation Vocabulary
6 items
- Framework6 min
Framework: The Calibration Dial
The Calibration Dial, 4 steps
- Reading10 min
Reading: The same news, three settings
Read a 341-word text about The same news, three settings
- Practice7 min
Practice: Cultural Adaptation Language
Gap-fill exercise, 6 items
- Dialogue10 min
Dialogue: Adapting Your Communication Style
Role-play: Practice adapting the same message for different cultural contexts. (3 lines)
- Discussion10 min
Discussion: Your mission: turn the dial
3 discussion questions
Open the full lesson
The remaining 7 stages of this lesson, with the procedure, the examples and the exercises, are included with Starter, along with the interactive version you can teach from. Lesson 1 of this course is free: the full plan is on this site, and a free account opens it in the interactive player.
Target vocabulary
In a Tuton account these words become your student's vocabulary deck, so they come back in practice between lessons.
This plan comes from the Cross-Cultural Communication course in the Tuton library. Browse all free lesson plans.