Guidelines for Effective Communication and Understanding

(The following excerpt is reproduced with the permission of Dr. Paul Leung of the University of North Texas. It is taken from the Teacher’s Guide to his course on “Multicultural Dimensions in Counseling.” These suggestions apply equally to teachers, discussion moderators, and students. Although these guidelines were developed for face-to-face classrooms, they are also adaptable to the online classroom.)

Below are some key points that often are important when dialoguing and interacting with persons whose culture is different than your own.

• Take sufficient time to effectively communicate.
• Care. Learn to be empathic.
• Be honest and sincere.
• One of the cruelest things one can do to another person is to not acknowledge that person.
• Develop a sense of belonging when interacting with others. Be welcoming and inclusive.
• Regularly, in your daily life, interact with persons whose culture, race, ethnicity and other identifiers and important characteristics are different than your own.
• Welcome persons with disabilities. Person with a disability is the preferred manner of speech, versus disabled person. Place the person before the disability.
• Spend quality time with persons whose backgrounds are different than yours.
• Set an example by being welcoming and inclusive to everyone.
• Learn to pronounce names correctly. Make a concerted effort to do so and to remember names.
• Introduce new persons to others who you believe may be helpful to them.
• Do not make assumptions.
• Ask questions and achieve dialogue to attain successful communication.
• Be a good listener.
• Encourage people to share experience, such as cultural similarities and differences, as well as concerns.
• Be willing to help persons change, one step at a time, regarding biases they may have and/or communicate.
• Learn to understand important practices of different religions.
• Learn to understand why someone believes what he/she believes, including why something is very important.
• Be respectful of what others value.
• Learn important information about the cultures of others (i.e., eye contact, interaction with professors or elders, differences in educational systems and other distinguishing cultural traits.)
• Understand the body language of others. Effective communication relates to nonverbal behavior and tone of voice, as well as words spoken.
• Learn about discrimination others have faced.
• Share correct information about the culture of others. Do no promote misinformation.
• Learn to assist in removing roadblocks for others.
• When communicating with others, it is OK to step out of your comfort zone. It may be a good idea to do so.
• Maintain positive dialogue even when there are differences in opinions and beliefs; do not attack the person. Agreeing to disagree may be an option. Learn from differences.
• Appreciate the value of someone speaking the language they share with family members and others.
• Learn a new language. If possible, you may want to try to become familiar with basic Spanish, or another appropriate language, if you are not already fluent in the language.
• Do not make discriminatory remarks or display discriminatory actions, as others learn from what you say and do. Be a positive role model.