A Study of the Teaching Materials and the Curricula on Intercultural Understanding

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Three papers in here discuss some aspects and problems of intercultural understanding, which would be full of suggestions to develop teaching materials and design curricula of it. The first author, Kanji Watanabe argues the problems of it in terms of theories and materials analysis in three chapters : the first chapter discusses the cause of miscommunication in intercultural communication, the second does the theories for improving intercultural communication skills, and the last does the problems of materials analysis of the composition of English textbooks. In conclusion, for the aim of the improvement of Japanese EFL students'skills for intercultural communication, two critical theories are proposed on the basis of the findings of the study concerning communication patterns of Japanese and American people. (78 P.)The second author, Kazuyuki Hashisako has made a wide survey of how Japanese college students understand their own cultural diversities since 1988. He tries to make an analysis of the large amount of data, to grasp the actual conditions, and to discuss the problems. (32 P.)The last author, Nobuya Higuchi attempts to clarify the current issues of intercultral understanding by focusing on the multicultural education in the Commonwealth of Australia. He states the multicultural perspectives to curriculum, which would provide us with useful suggestions to the education of intercultural understanding in japan. (ll P.)