Games on social skills: a cross-cultural course

Mikhail V Klarin Games on social skills: a cross-cultural course for Russian/English-speakers

The International Simulation & Gaming Yearbook Volume 2 - Interactive Learning. Ed by Roger Armstrong, Fred Percival, Danny Sansers. - London, Kogan Page, 1994. P.111-114 •

ABSTRACT

This chapter describes the author's experience working with English-language games on social skills (some of them designed by a British author) with native Russian speakers belonging to a culture previously isolated from 'live', people-to-people international contact. The social/ communication skills training course, based on a succession of gaming activities, is presented to advanced Russian students of English to go beyond the traditional framework of vocabulary and grammar patterns and develop more in-depth understanding/ feeling/ experience of a 'Western' communication manner. The chapter presents an approach to combine a structured games repertoire with a design of 'dialogue threads', creating a personally meaningful social skills course for cross-cultural communication situations.