The following exercise requires you to go back to Darla Deardorff’s intercultural competence framework and to reflect on where your intercultural competence development is at this stage, so that you can choose how to work on it or develop it, according to what you identify.  

For that purpose, we're going to list items that we’ve described as invaluable in developing intercultural competence and ask you some questions about them.

Download the checklist and rate yourself on the following, from 1 to 5, depending on the level of development or maturity you feel you’re at. 1 meaning poor (you feel you need to work on it!) and 5 meaning you feel highly about your development of that item.

Remember this is only for your eyes, the intention being identifying your strengths, which can help you to manage intercultural interactions more appropriately and effectively, and also to identify those areas in which you can continue developing your intercultural competence, those areas that you rate lower.

CHECKLIST

On which of these intercultural competences’ components did you rate yourself high or did you rate yourself low?  

Hopefully, this reflection can invite you to develop some of the components in which you rated yourself low. Use it as a compass to guide your intercultural competence development.

It's very useful, for that purpose, to think of a goal I want to reach related to the component I’m working on, in a very concrete way:

  • What aspect do I want to develop?
  • How do I plan to do this? 
  • Specific actions I need to take? 
  • My first step will be… Which I will take by…

I encourage you to do the same! Let’s get on that bicycle! 

Should you want to review some of this questions again (and take a look and some others), please find in the attached documents a guide with reflections questions, designed by Darla Deardorff, that can be used by teachers to develop their own intercultural competence and increase the effectiveness and appropriateness of their interactions and their teachings when working with learners from different cultural backgrounds.