Assignment
As the world continues to become more diverse and multicultural, you will find yourself interacting with individuals who differ from you in many significant ways. This diversity brings with it many great benefits but it can also impact communication and relationships in unexpected ways. Consider if you, as a professional in Human Services, have to provide in-home services to a family that has recently immigrated to the United States from another country. How might this diversity impact expectations, communication, and relationships of all involved? Could you gather some information related to their culture prior to engaging with them?
Purpose: This interview and paper project focuses on exploring and learning about cultural differences in interpersonal relations and communication. One way to safely experience and identify differences is through interviewing a person from a culture significantly different from your own.
Overview: Students will conduct an interview with an individual who identifies as being of another culture. The person interviewed must differ from you in at least two significant ways (culture, religion, primary language, country of origin). There are two parts of this project: the first being the interview, and the second is academic research on aspects of your interviewee's culture. Your written explanation, description, and outside validation (through references) will point out the differences you find between cultures.
The paper must follow APA style, and will include a title page, reference page, and running header. No abstract is needed. APA standards include size 12 Times New Roman font, double-spaced and normal margins. You may use the following as guidelines for headers:
Introduction
Introduce your interviewee, how you know the person, and describe the cultural differences and reason for choosing this person. Include a thesis statement explaining the research aspect of the assignment. Clearly identify the part of the culture that you chose to explore.
Interview
Write a narrative summary of the interview, where you paraphrase the discussion and highlight what you've learned about the cultural differences of the interviewee. You may relate some of the interview to course material.
Related Research
This section will cover the research aspect of the assignment. Explain why the topic interested you, and continue your discussion using APA standards for in-text citing. Remember to integrate what you learned about your interviewee in with your research.
Conclusion
A strong conclusion paragraph is expected to summarize and tie together what you learned throughout the interview and research.