THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, October 27, 1994 TAG: 9410260163
SECTION: SUFFOLK SUN PAGE: 18 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PHYLIS SPEIDELL, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 81 lines
IVANA BOZDECHOVA, A CZECH linquist and exchange professor from Charles University in Prague, is spending a semester at Tidewater Community College helping students learn to bridge cultural gaps.
Bozdechova is team teaching a course in intercultural communication with Barbara Hund, a TCC professor who has also taught at Charles University and at the Beijing Broadcasting Institute in China.
The intercultural communications class is taught on TCC's Norfolk campus this semester and will be offered at the Portsmouth campus in Suffolk in the spring.
The course focuses on the subtle cultural differences that make people behave the way they do. Bozdechova and Hund each bring a wide range of international experience to the classroom and are joined by foreign guest lecturers and former exchange students who offer their insights on Japanese, German, French, Russion, and Mexican cultures.
``We are all from different cultural perspectives,'' Hund said. ``If we learn how people communicate within their own culture, we can learn how to communicate effectively with them.''
Hund cited an example of a former student who researched the cultural heritage of her husband's family.
``She never realized before why her in-laws did what they did and told me, `Now I can understand, where before I was just frustrated.' ''
Bozdechova offered a few tips for better understanding Czech culture and customs:
If a Czech acquaintance says he ``will have 20,'' look for a yawn. What you have heard is the Czech equivalent of the American expression, ``catch 40 winks.''
Or if he mentions ``drinking like a rainbow,'' it is just the more colorful Czech version of ``drink like a fish.''
In the Czech Republic, especially Prague, be prepared for the city to shut down at 4 p.m. for a traditional coffee and conversation break.
Do not expect to be invited into a Prague family's home for dinner because most Czechs do their entertaining in neighborhood pubs.
Above all else, don't criticize the local beer. Its alleged superiority to other brews is a source of regional pride.
Our shrinking world, the proliferation of electronic communication and the globalization of many business corporations, are all additional reasons for developing a sensitivity and awareness of cultural differences, Hund said.
Bozdechova has watched closely how the Czech Republic has become more westernized since the 1989 revolution that drove the Communists from power. She has seen cultural differences lessen somewhat with five McDonald's franchises and numerous K-Marts springing up in Prague, once better known for being the home of Franz Kafka than the home of the Big Mac.
But the Western influence, she admitted, is not totally new.
When Bozdechova, 33, was growing up in Bohemia, she knew she wanted to be a teacher, but she was unsure what she wanted to teach. Her answer came from American music of the 1960s and '70s and her growing fascination with the English language.
``I would listen to Simon and Garfunkel, Joan Baez and Bob Dylan - and though I did not understand the English, I had the feeling that they had a very important message that I wanted very badly to understand.''
Bozdechova received her doctorate from Charles University, founded in 1348 and the oldest university in Central Europe, and was immediately offered a faculty position there. Since that time she also has been a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Nebraska and Stanford University and a visiting professor at the University of Leningrad.
``Czechs are born with a high degree of appreciation for and need for their heritage and culture,'' she said, adding that she was happy to teach this particular course because it gave her the opportunity to tell people what contemporary Czech culture was really like.
``It amazes me how much things have changed in the last five years,'' she said. ``We are very similar to the U.S. in pop culture now.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by RICHARD L. DUNSTON
Czech linguist Ivana Bozdechova teaches a class in intercultural
communication at the Norfolk campus of TCC. The class will be
offered at the Portsmouth campus in the spring.
by CNB