April 23, 2017 13:30 – 15:30 at Create Hamamatsu (coming earlier is fine)
As the world becomes increasingly global, most college graduates obtain jobs that involve communicating with a wide variety of people. To better understand what kinds of intercultural communication skills Japanese corporations need, we conducted five focus groups with a total of 27 participants. Our analyses revealed that participants’ examples of intercultural communication included more domestic examples (e.g., gender, region, job type, age) than international ones. Further, many of the techniques described by the participants were an amalgam of “Japanese” (e.g., sasshi, situation-specific adjustment) and “Western” (e.g., verbalizing thoughts, taking the initiative) communication skills. This interactive workshop will present the results of the study and provide an opportunity for participants to brainstorm and share different classroom activities to foster these skills.
Tomoko Yoshida is a professor in the Faculty of Business and Commerce at Keio University. She is very well known in the field of Intercultural Studies and has authored, co-authored or co-edited over eight books or book chapters and 30 journal articles (too numerous to list here). She has also authored multiple articles on the experiences of Japanese returnees and Japanese biethnics in Japan. Born in the Philippines and having spent the first 18 years of her life outside of Japan, Tomoko has a personal and professional interest in the identity of those who live in the interstices of society. She has served as the journal editor of the Journal of Intercultural Communication since 2014 and will be the Vice President of SIETAR Japan starting in April, 2017.