For trainers with trainees from different cultural backgrounds, to engage with them goes beyond knowing where they are from. Trainers must understand their trainees in a holistic way, incorporating their cultural traditions into lessons and activities, so they feel understood, comfortable, and focused on learning. This tool is designed to support trainers on building inclusive multicultural learning environments, by integrating in their training their trainees’ different cultural backgrounds.

The use of the Aspects to Consider when Designing a Multicultural Language Training Programme tool aims to enhance trainees’:

• multilingual competence – ability to communicate in an appropriate range of cultural contexts according to trainees’ needs
• cultural awareness and expression - understanding how cultural aspects can influence each other as well as the ideas of the individual.

Reflect on cultural factors that can influence trainees and learning;
Identify ways of introducing cultural factors in language training planning.

Up to 24 people.

2 hours of contact + 3 hours self-learning

Cards to hand over; pens/pencils.

1. Introduce trainees to the concept of “Culture”.  It is a broad term, but for our multicultural purposes it can be defined as “The ideas, customs, and social behaviour of a particular people or society” (www.lexico.com ). Add that migrants from varied nationalities, ethnicities, and races all bring cultural traditions to their interactions, including at school, and it’s up to trainers to recognise and share these different perspectives.

2. Tell trainees to organise groups of up to four people. Next, distribute per each group 1 of the 6 cards in “annex 1” that indicate some cultural factors from outside the classroom that can affect learning.

3. Each group must discuss about possible issues that can be brought to learning related to the cultural factor presented in the card they were given. Then they must list those issues in a paper. If they present difficulties finding issues, you can give them the examples for each factor provided in “annex 2”.

4. After, the trainer distributes a new card to each group, with a different cultural factor than the one they already were given. Trainees must repeat the process of discussing issues for that cultural factor and list them in a paper. This way, there always will be at least two perspectives about the same cultural factor.

5. When groups finish this task, they must elect a spokesperson to share their findings in one of the topics. Then, the group that also received the same topic must share its findings. Do this for all the topics distributed.

6. After the presentation of the two different findings on each factor, you can put some questions to the trainees and reflect with them about some aspects.
You can put them the following questions:
- How do you think you can integrate this topic in your training plan?
- Which strategies do you think you can use with trainees to overcome the issue(s) listed?

7. Finish this activity by raising awareness that multicultural education is not a task or goal to accomplish. It is an approach to education that aims to include all trainees, promote learning of other cultures, and teach social skills in a multicultural setting. It promotes a brainstorming of ideas, stories, and experiences that enrich the educational experience in ways that are impossible in monocultural classes.

You can distribute more than 2 cards with cultural factors to each group, depending on your specific goals and the time you have available. If you find pertinent, do add extra factors to the cards that reflect the reality of your trainees - be free to create your own cards with your own factors.

• Exercise 1
• Match each cultural factor with its most adequate possible consequence.
  
  

  Cultural factor	Possible consequence
  A – Food and diet	Trainees from different cultures may have different cooking and eating habits.
  B – Socioeconomic status	Migrant trainees may miss training because they often have extra jobs to get more income.
  C – Language	Trainees that speak a mother tongue that has a different root than the one of the host countries can have extra difficulties learning the foreign language.
  4 – Family structure and values	Trainees can come from different types of households. For example, in some cultures some families live in multi-generational homes.
  5 – Religion	Trainees can adhere to specific duties or rules set forth by their religion that may cause trouble balancing priorities.
  6 – Ethnicity	Some migrant trainees may clash with occidental ideas of classroom behaviour or learning techniques.

• Exercise 2
• To be updated later.
• Interactive exercise
• 
  

  Cultural factor

  
  

  Match each cultural factor with its most adequate possible consequence.

  
  

  Food and diet

  Socioeconomic status

  Language

  Family structure and values

  Religion

  Ethnicity

  Drop here

  Drop here

  Drop here

  Drop here

  Drop here

  Drop here

  
  

  Possible consequence

  
  

  Trainees from different cultures may have different cooking and eating habits.

  Migrant trainees may miss training because they often have extra jobs to get more income.

  Some migrant trainees may clash with occidental ideas of classroom behaviour or learning techniques.

  Trainees can adhere to specific duties or rules set forth by their religion that may cause trouble balancing priorities.

  Trainees that speak a mother tongue that has a different root than the one of the host countries can have extra difficulties learning the foreign language.

  Trainees can come from different types of households. For example, in some cultures some families live in multi-generational homes.

  Submit